NATURE LORE 



in the process of transformation, mechanical part 

 though it be; but a few days later, through the 

 patient and clear-seeing eyes of my friend Miss 

 Grace Humphrey, I witnessed this operation also. 

 She wrote: 



The day after you left we found another caterpillar, 

 a few feet away from yours. It had already made its 

 saddle-cord and shed its silken robe when we found it, 

 but we watched it change from gray-green to, not green- 

 ish-brown at all, but a grayness matching the concrete of 

 the house; for it was higher up than yours, on the ledge 

 below the window, hanging from the ledge against the 

 plaster wall. Its cord, too, apparently grew thicker just 

 at the ends, showing up more plainly for a bit; then like 

 yours it dried up and more perfectly matched its back- 

 ground. In neither of them did the cord continue to look 

 thicker. 



The same day I found a third caterpillar under the 

 pear-tree, the very same kind, black with a wide green 

 stripe marking off each segment, and the rows of yellow 

 buttons. I carried it on a leaf up to the porch, where wo 

 put it under a glass bowl. But of course it thought that 

 an unfavorable place for housing itself for the winter, and 

 it would n't start, though we kept it there two days. At 

 noon, when freed, it climbed up the wall of the house 

 rather near yours (so they were photographed together), 

 and we held our breaths to see if it would start building 

 operations there. But no. Up the window-ledge it wormed 

 its way, and thence up and up, by the side of the window, 

 leaving all the way along a silky thread, and constantly 

 going back and forth with its head. 



Mr. R knocked it down once to keep it in the sun- 

 light in order to photograph it, and it immediately climbed 

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