A LONG ISLAND MEADOW 



while attaining its size, upon the food-plant. Dur- 

 ing- this period it moults its skin four times. When 

 the time comes for the change to chrysalis, it 

 usually leaves the food-plant and seeks some safe 

 and steady spot, where it hangs from nine to fif- 

 teen days, when the butterfly emerges. 



In and out among the butterflies flashes the 

 darning-needle, its blue gleam recalling those 

 childish days when we fearfully hid our ears lest 

 they be darned together. Big green grasshoppers Other in- 

 cling to the leaves and grass-blades, whose exact 

 color they often seem to reproduce, another case 

 of the mimicry which brings security. Under the 

 grasses crawls the great black, furry spider whose 

 bite, tradition tells us, is death, and seeming to me 

 more like the incarnation of the spirit of evil than 

 any other thing I know, save a black snake. In the 

 centre of its beautiful upright web close by watches 

 another huge, poisonous-looking creature with 

 black body, spotted and banded with light yellow. 



Upon the foot-path along the fence lies the 

 empty shell of a turtle. Farther on the skin of a 

 snake is drying in the sun. At times I am more 

 grateful for the protection which my rubber-boots Rubber- 

 afford me from furry spiders and other crawling, 

 creeping things which I picture in the black slime 

 below the sedges than from the mud in which I 

 sink almost knee-deep. 



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