the winter to come to life when warmth 

 and vegetation revive in the spring. The 

 eggs are laid with marvellous instinct 

 upon the plants that form the proper and 

 perhaps the only possible food for the 

 caterpillar to be hatched out of them. 

 The grubs and caterpillars that have 

 been lying dormant during the winter in 

 the ground, or under bark, or inside 

 some snug retreat, in rotten wood or the 

 like, also find proper food at hand when 

 they awake — often highly improper food 

 from our point of view, for they attack 

 the roots or leaves of the plants we have 

 been carefully cultivating. 



The warm, moist days of May and June 

 bring these caterpillars to life in count- 

 less thousands, and in every sort of place, 

 so that there is enough of them in 

 amount and variety to satisfy all the 

 birds— more than enough, for now and 

 then they overflow into the devastating 

 "armies of worms" that destroy our 

 lawns, meadows, grain-fields and shade- 

 trees. Let us look at this subject of cat- 

 erpillars a little more closely. 



Many insects in the second (larval) 

 stage of growth may be called caterpil- 

 lars, but those in which we are especially 

 interested at this season are young but- 

 terflies. Most of these are worm-like, 

 with a conspicuous horny head, having 

 well-developed jaws, and often long, flex- 

 ible horns, by which they investigate 

 their food and feel their way about. The 



NATURE'S CALENDAR ,,,, 



June 9 



