THE BUTTERFLY. 



109 



for food. Some are soft and green, and these are the very 

 staff of life to all the little soft-billed birds, the tailor-birds 

 and sun-birds, and tits and warblers. Others are large and 

 hairy, and these are in the thoughts of the harsh-voiced 

 oriole, as it darts like a gleam of sunlight into the dark 

 foliage of the tamarind-tree. Moth caterpillars have also a 

 great office to perform in thinning too luxuriant vegetation. 

 All through the teeming months of the monsoon, when 

 grass and rank weeds and overgrown creepers are choking 

 one another, and struggling for a place on the crowded 

 earth, myriads of moth larvae, with the most miraculous 

 appetites, are busy night and day eating them down. In 

 this work the caterpillars of butterflies give little help. 

 Butterflies do not lay their eggs in the lump, like moths, 

 but one here and one there, and the solitary caterpillars 

 are too few to make much impression. And they are not 

 good eating as a rule. Some are spiny, like the fretful 

 porcupine, some protect themselves with an odour like the 

 musk-rat, and some taste nasty at least, so the birds say. 

 And as with the larvse, so with the perfect insect. Butter- 

 flies enjoy a strange immunity from being eaten. They 

 fall into spiders' webs at times, and lizards catch them if 

 they can. My pet chameleon's ration is about half a dozen 



