78 EYE SPY 



with it the connection from the spiracles at the 

 sides of the body. At last, with one final effort, 

 the skin behind the head ruptures, and discloses 

 the new skin beneath, and through the opening 

 thus made the new head soon appears, and the 

 entire new suit of clothes emerges in a few mo- 

 ments. But though the old clothes are worked 

 off into a litde shrunken pellet at the tail, the old 

 head-shell is still retained, being attached to the 

 hairs immediately back of the new head, and thus 

 retained. Five or six times in the life of the cat- 

 erpillar this same process is performed, each per- 

 formance leaving its token ; so that our " profess- 

 or" enjoys the unique distinction of being able, in 

 his mature years, to look up to the head he wore 

 when he was a baby or youngster, and make it 

 useful, too, in keeping off the flies as he ponders 

 on the flight of time. 



But this is not all our professor's peculiarities. 

 One day, as I came to look at my hump-backed 

 pets, I discovered that most of them had shrunk 

 a full third, and had refused to eat and, what sur- 

 prised me more, refused to wiggle. A closer ex- 

 amination of the box showed that while they had 

 ignored the lilac leaves, they had been gnawing 

 the pasteboard everywhere in the box, even per- 

 forating it with a number of holes. The cap- 

 tives in a thin wooden box were similarly affected, 

 and numbers of holes were to be seen. What did 



