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NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [14:6— Sept., 1918 



The eggs of the black swallow- 

 tail butterfly, enlarged. 



My first experience in this study was 

 with the black swallow-tail, Papilio 

 aster ias. I found the eggs on the 

 parsley plants in our garden. They 

 were most beautiful specimens, in 

 their bluish iridescence resembling 

 little opals rather than the eggs of 

 insects. I placed the little treasures 

 in a dish, which I covered with a piece 

 of glass. For two days I watched 

 them, and at the end of the second 

 day I observed a black speck on one 

 of the eggs. I examined it with my 

 lens, and. there I saw one of the won- 

 ders of my life: a tiny wiggling 

 creature eating a hole in the egg shell 

 so that it might escape from its prison. Soon the hole was large 

 enough ; the little caterpillar then placed its true legs on the out- 

 side of its prison, and with these as a support pulled out the rest 

 of its body. With its little, but powerful, mandibles it began 

 eating the egg shell, but soon stopped as if the task were too 

 difficult. Soon it began wandering about looking for food. I 

 pushed a fresh parsley leaf near it; it soon discovered it, crawled 

 upon it, and began to eat the tender parts of the leaf. 



It was a pretty little creature in its black dress, with a white belt 

 across the middle of its body, and black spines tipped with orange. 

 It did not keep this dress very long, but exchanged it for one of 

 light green striped with black, in which were rich orange dots. 

 This change was brought about on the seventeenth day by the third 

 moult. I was neither fortunate enough to observe its first moult 

 which occurred on the third day ; nor its second which occurred on 

 the ninth day ; but I did observe the third. I watched it eagerly as 

 the little pad of silk was spun, as the skin broke behind the neck, 

 and as the little mask came off its face, and as it wiggled itself out 

 of the remaining skin, which it left behind in a shriveled mass. At 

 first the face was a plain green, but, in a few minutes, faint stripes 

 began to appear, and at the end of the second hour the stripes on 

 its face were as black as those upon the rest of its body. A fourth 

 moulting occurred on the twenty-fourth day. 



