SOCIAL CATERPILLARS. 41 



hair plucked from his own body, and eking out these natural 

 materials by extraneous ones, such as grains of earth, pieces 

 of leaf, or even bits of paper when placed within his reach. 

 Shut up in this secure asylum he will become a chrysalis, and 

 in two or three weeks, come forth a Tiger Moth complete, a 

 winged creature, glorious in " crimson dyes" and richest brown 

 and cream colour. 



* ***** 



Leaving the garden, let us extend our hunt over a wider 

 range, and here, without the paling, we discover, hung upon 

 an oak-tree, another cloak of protection for Caterpillar life 

 amidst the surrounding death of vegetation. We have here 

 no solitary survivors, but a social company, if social we may 

 designate a few dozens of half, or quite, dormant little animals, 

 bidding defiance to Jack Frost from behind the triple tapestry of 

 a silken hammock woven by themselves. This their winter dor- 

 mitory is of shape irregular, with here and there a brown oak- 

 leaf woven into its outward texture, the interior being divided, 

 also with tapestry, into various snug apartments, where the 

 little inmates lie coiled together by twos and threes, till waked 

 into activity by the coming spring. These, at present harmless 

 slumberers, will grow, by and bye, into tremendous ravagers of 

 the oak and other trees, and will then, on the boughs they have 

 stripped bare, be sufficiently discernible in their tufted parure 

 of black, white, and scarlet. These are the progeny of a pretty 

 white moth, yclept the gold-tail, from a tuft of gold-coloured 

 hair at the end of her body. But stay ! What have we here ? 

 A sort of rough excrescence seeming to grow out of the tree, 

 just within the edge of its shell-like trunk. When we come to 

 look at it, it seems not, however, like a vegetable growth, it is 

 the wood-built structure of a Caterpillar, and his present dor- 

 mitory, now that he has cast off his working dress, and put on 

 the monastic habit of an idle chrysalis. Let us look into his 

 cell, or at least on its exterior, a little closer. 



The fabric is of oval form, composed of pieces of rotten wood 



