INSECT LIFE 195 



When you see this droll thing, and look down 

 on the caterpillar corpses, it is hard not to believe 

 that, one and all, they are shamming death, so that 

 an enemy may not eat them up ; for, you may argue, 

 a dead caterpillar is not likely to suit the nice taste 

 of a bird. The caterpillar corpses out of sight, and 

 only thought about, you are more likely to conclude 

 that the thing is out of the question that a creature 

 intellectually so mean as a baby caterpillar cannot 

 sham anything. What brain could there imaginably 

 be for craft in that ugly black-pin head of the 

 peacock butterfly grub in its babyhood ? Death is 

 a thing of whose nature human beings, probably 

 alone among living creatures, have the smallest 

 inkling. The most, then, we can imagine the baby 

 caterpillars doing is keeping quite still to escape the 

 attention of some enemy which might seize and 

 eat them. Even this act of shamming, we argue, 

 further, is not their own. It is Nature's deception, 

 not theirs. No glimmering of intelligence taught 

 them to strike these queer dead-and-dry attitudes. 

 Rather, we think, it has come about thus : those 

 baby caterpillars that originally tended to fall off 

 a leaf at the least disturbance, and remain still the 

 longest, tended to outlive their less fortunate not 

 less intelligent fellows ; and so the tendency became 

 set and hereditary. Those baby caterpillars that 

 did not fall off at the least shock and shrivel up 

 into stillness they or their descendants, were gradu- 



