558 



Popular Science Monthly 



slits. When it is necessary to close the 

 slits on account of rifle fire, the pilot 

 gropes his way as best he may. The 

 captain or lieutenant in command is the 

 brains of the steel-clad caterpillar. 



Caterpillars have fairly active brains and 

 a good workable ganglia, or nerve center. 

 On either side of the head they have small, 

 shining eyes in rows. They also get good 

 information about the nature of the 

 surface over 

 which they are 

 passing by low- 

 ering delicate 

 filaments or 

 sense organs 

 known a s p a - 

 pilli. 



The British 

 tank is a terror 

 to the Teuton 

 infantry as it 

 starts relent- 

 lessly over No 

 Man's Land, 

 crushing every- 

 thing within 

 its reach and 

 mowing down 

 the enemy. It 

 brushes aside 

 wire entangle- 

 ments, shatters 

 dugouts and 



forts of reinforced concrete and slays 

 cowering wretches in the trenches whose 

 cries for mercy the men in the car of 

 death cannot hear. What the tank is to 

 modern battle, the caterpillar may well 

 be in the wars of the insect world. 



Imagine what a vision of frightfulness 

 that hideous specimen of the larval state, 

 the hickory-horned devil, would be to 

 the human race, if he were enlarged to 

 tank size, approximately eight feet wide 

 and twenty-eight feet long ! What a sight 

 to make men's knees shake with fear, 

 with his waving antennae, his fierce and 

 gleaming jaws, his towering horns, his 

 beady eyes, and his ponderous bulk ! He 

 would ignore all obstacles as he went 

 trampling and devouring over the plain, 

 his vertical mouth opening and shutting 

 meanwhile like a ponderous valve. 



In the realm of twigs and leaves, the 

 cry "The Caterpillars are coming!" must 

 mean as much as the alarm "The Tanks! 



B-raln 



Weapon 



Weapon 



Prolegs (Shoes) 



A tank and a caterpillar are first cousins. 

 Notice the wonderful likeness in mechanical detail 



The Tanks !" means to the Germans. The 

 caterpillar is not the inoffensive slug 

 which he often seems to be as we look 

 down upon him as he bestirs himself 

 across some woodland walk. His hide is 

 very thick, and underneath it is a heavy 

 layer of fat. The doughty warrior ants 

 coming out with their nippers to assail 

 him, do not worry him much. Up goes 

 the tank of the world underfoot, and 



down he comes 

 with a swing 

 of the forward 

 part of his body 

 and a group of 

 his enemies are 

 crushed to 

 extinction. 

 Several varie- 

 ties of cater- 

 pillars have 

 very effective 

 weapons of of- 

 fense. The spe- 

 cies from which 

 comes the swal- 

 low-tail butter- 

 fly mounts a 

 rapid-fire 

 poison-gas gun. 

 When he is hard 

 pressed by his 

 enemies he will 

 project from his 

 head a tube which looks not unlike the 

 barrel of a Lewis machine-gun, and dis- 

 charge an odor so offensive that insects 

 within scent of it curl up and die. 



The camouflage of tanks and cater- 

 pillars is effective always. "Old Crusty" 

 at the western front and "Old Crawly," 

 of the garden both resort to disguise. 

 The tank is often painted the hue of the 

 mire; the caterpillar assumes the tone of 

 the soil. 



There scarcely seems a characteristic, 

 therefore, either of the fuzzy denizens of 

 the foliage or of the monster military 

 mechanisms which may turn the tide 

 of this war, which does not reveal that, 

 after all, the terrors of the terrain are 

 caterpillars titanic. 



It seems, after all, as though " there's 

 nothing now under the sun." We copy 

 the fish for submarines, the birds for 

 airplanes, and now the tank is just a 

 glorified caterpillar. 



