MAGPIE CATERPILLARS. 39 



is he about ? Plucking and picking at the bare branches, when 

 meanwhile, close beside him, lies a snail, one of his favourite 

 morsels. There goes the quick-eared songster, put to flight 

 even by our stealthy step j but let him go, we shall find out, all 

 the same, the business he's been after. Aye, aye, Sir Thrush, 

 we even thought so, thy large bright eye has been quicker 

 than our own, in discovering, before us, the very game for 

 which we have been hunting. We are not so clever as thou 

 art in detection of life, clothed in the garb of death. On this 

 branch of the currant bush, where thou wast so busy, remains 

 a trio of stiff, stick-like little animals, more like twigs than 

 Caterpillars, and distinguishable only from the branch itself, 

 neither by form nor motion, but slightly by colour, which in- 

 stead of brown, is whitish yellow, besprinkled with black. 

 These are the Caterpillars of the Magpie Moth, numbers of 

 which, so called from their mode of colouring, are to be seen 

 in almost every garden, flying heavily through the twilight of 

 summer's evenings ; and from the eggs of one of them, deposited 

 on this currant branch, came forth, in autumn, the curious spe- 

 cimens of" still life" now before us. In these we have an in- 

 stance, among others, of Caterpillars defended through the 

 winter by a state of torpidity in which they have now continued 

 for many weeks, without eating, and will thus remain till the 

 breath of springhas roused them to activity, and provided employ- 

 ment for their jaws. The power of Caterpillars, also, in resisting 

 cold has been proved by experiment to be very great, scarcely 

 indeed inferior to that of insect eggs. Those of the cabbage, 

 frozen so stiff as to snap like glass, have yet lived and become 

 Butterflies, while others have revived, after chinking like stones 

 when thrown into a glass.* 



What next have we come to, basking in a ray of wintry sun- 

 shine on a root of dandelion ? It is another Caterpillar, now a 

 very little one, because short of his full growth, not naked, like 



* Dr. Lister. 



