6 HANDBOOK OF NATURE STUDY 



would have borne if it had remained on its own tree. This 

 process of improving the fruit of trees is called grafting. 

 If only a bud is transferred from one tree to another, it is 

 called budding. There is quite a number of methods of 

 grafting besides the one described. In a tree thus im- 

 proved, the roots of the wild stem furnish the moisture and 

 mineral food, while the transferred twig develops into the 

 flowering and fruit-bearing top. 



6. The Apple-tree Tent Caterpillar. Clisiocampa Ameri- 

 cana. 



MATERIAL : Eggs and caterpillars with tent ; May beetles, or June 

 bugs and their larvae, if procurable ; several twigs with leaf-lice on 

 them. Try to find some lady bugs and their larvae feeding on leaf- 

 lice. Keep some of the caterpillars in your observation box ; have the 

 children feed them, and observe their development. Describe the 

 moth, if you get any. 



Gardeners and farmers have to fight a great many insect 

 pests. Some of these insects lived on wild plants, before 

 our country was settled, but, like the potato beetle, have 

 now taken to eating cultivated plants. Others, like the 

 white cabbage butterfly, have been accidentally brought over 

 from Europe. 



To-day we shall study the tent caterpillar, which has 

 spread over nearly the whole of the United States. 



In the month of July a small, reddish-brown moth lays 

 about three hundred eggs, which are fastened in the shape 

 of a ring around the small twigs of fruit trees. The eggs are 

 firmly glued together and covered with a kind of varnish. 

 The next spring, about the time the leaves begin to grow 

 on the trees, the caterpillars hatch, make their first meal 

 on the glue with which the eggs are covered, and then 

 ttiey begin to eat the tender young leaves, and to weave a 

 little tent. Into this tent they crawl towards evening 



Observations. Flowers of maples, box elder, and piues. 



