108 



HABITS. 



when they shall have turned it over ; often they 

 have to cut two channels in order to procure a 

 flap sufficiently small for their 

 purposes ; and it is curious 

 to watch one of these tender 

 creatures, just as soon as it 

 has devoured its egg-shell, 

 a tough oak -leaf, to build for 



FIG. 93. Chrysalis of 

 Epargyreus Tityrus, nat. 

 size. 



struggling with 

 itself a house. 



The caterpillar of some of the 

 swallow-tails always rests upon 

 the middle of the upper sur- 

 face of a leaf, upon the floor of 

 which it has stretched a silken 

 carpet, so as to make the edges 

 curl toward each other, and 

 thus form an open nest. On one 

 rainy day, Mr. L. Trouvelot, of 

 Cambridge, noticed a caterpil- 

 lar of the Tiger Swallow-tail 

 on a bush in his garden. " I 

 certainly thought," he says,* 

 " that the invention of resting 

 in the hollow of a curved leaf 

 on a rainy day was a very poor 

 one ; for since the bent leaf per- 

 formed the office of a gutter, the water must flow 



FIG. 94 Nest of cater- 

 pillar of Thauaos Persius, 

 nat. size. 



* Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., xii., 92 (1869). 



