204 HANDBOOK OF NATURE STUDY 



and pupils to raise the chrysalides from caterpillars, which 

 are very easily found on milkweeds. 



The monarchs hibernate in the adult state. In the 

 extreme south they fly all winter. In what state do the 

 cabbage butterflies hibernate? 



Let the children raise monarchs, and let them watch and 

 describe the different stages of development. Try to follow 

 up the life history of several caterpillars ; feed them with 

 the plants on which you find them. Are caterpillars at all 

 particular about their food plants ? See if you can make 

 the monarch caterpillars eat anything else than milkweed 

 leaves. 



For more information about butterflies, see French, Butterflies of 

 the Eastern United States. For insects in general, see Comstock, 

 Manual for the Study of Insects. Scudder gives a very interesting 

 account of the life history of the monarch in his little book : Life of a 

 Butterfly. 



32. The Honeybee. 



MATERIAL : Some comb honey. Ask a bee-keeper to place a few 

 workers, drones, and queens for you in small bottles or tubes ; procure 

 from him different kinds of brood cells, some larvae and eggs. If no 

 bee-keeper lives near, catch some working bees on flowers, and use 

 the cells, eggs, and larvse of the common wasp to illustrate how mem- 

 bers of the bee family raise their young. Any boy can find these 

 open wasp cones behind shutters and boards. Throw hot water on 

 them after dark. Previously observed : Bees on flowers and bees 

 swarming. Make a list of flowers honeybees visit ; also of those they 

 do not visit. 



Who of us does not associate the buzzing of honeybees with 

 the flowers, blue skies, and gentle breezes of those happy 

 summers of boyhood or girlhood, when life was still a beauti- 

 ful poem to us, and when our hearts were even lighter than 

 the wings of the bees and the butterflies that hummed and 

 gambolled about us? How the little child, scarcely able to 

 walk, will tumble after the first butterfly of spring! How 



