The Arbutus Caterpillar 



defined circumstances; and this cooperation 

 was wanting. Chance perhaps will one day 

 teach me more than I want to know; I shall 

 be attacked in the manner familiar to the 

 woodcutters and shall pass a night in torment, 

 tossing and turning as though on a bed of 

 live coals. 



What the direct contact of the caterpillar 

 did not teach me the artifices of chemistry will 

 demonstrate with a violence which I was far 

 from expecting. I treat the caterpillar with 

 ether, just as I treated the slough of the Pine 

 Processionary. The number of the creatures 

 taken for the infusion they are pretty small 

 as yet, are scarcely half the size which 

 they will attain when mature is about a 

 hundred. After a couple of days' maceration, 

 I filter the liquid and leave it to evaporate 

 freely. With the few drops that remain I 

 soak a square of blotting-paper folded in four 

 and apply it to the inner surface of my fore- 

 arm, with a thin rubber sheet and a bandage. 

 It is an exact repetition of what I did with 

 the Pine Processionary. 



Applied in the morning, the blister hardly 

 takes effect until the following night. Then 

 by degrees the irritation becomes unendurable; 



150 



