58 STEICTLY INCOG. 



further enlarged by Mr. Kaphael Meldola, but will present 

 them instead with a brief resume, boiled down and con- 

 densed into a patent royal elixir of learning. Your cater- 

 pillar, then, runs many serious risks in early life from the 

 annoying persistence of sundry evil-disposed birds, who 

 insist at inconvenient times in picking him off the leaves of 

 gooseberry bushes and other his chosen places of residence. 

 His infant mortality, indeed, is something simply appal- 

 ling, and it is only by laying the eggs that produce him in 

 enormous quantities that his fond mother the butterfly ever 

 succeeds in rearing on an average two of her brood to 

 replace the imago generation just departed. Accordingly, 

 the caterpillar has been forced by adverse circumstances to 

 assume the most ridiculous and impossible disguises, appear- 

 ing now in the shape of a leaf or stem, now as a bundle of 

 dark-green pine needles, and now again as a bud or flower 

 all for the innocent purpose of concealing his whereabouts 

 from the inquisitive gaze of the birds his enemies. 



When the caterpillar lives on a plant like a grass, the 

 ribs or veins of which run up and down longitudinally, he 

 is usually striped or streaked with darker lines in the same 

 direction as those on his native foliage. When, on the 

 contrary, he lives upon broader leaves, provided with a 

 midrib and branching veins, his stripes and streaks (not to 

 be out of the fashion) run transversely and obliquely, at 

 exactly the same angle as those of his wonted food-plant. 

 Very often, if you take a green caterpillar of this sort away 

 from his natural surroundings, you will be surprised at the 

 conspicuousness of his pale lilac or mauve markings ; surely, 

 you will think to yourself, such very distinct variegation as 

 that must betray him instantly to his watchful enemies. 

 But no ; if you replace him gently where you first found 

 him, you will see that the lines exactly harmonise with the 

 joints and shading of his native leaf: they are delicate 



