42 PUSS COCOON. 



and bark, meshed in and kept together by silk and gluten ; the 

 latter renders it so hard, that it refuses to yield under pressure 

 of the finger ; we might perhaps force it, though not without 

 trouble, by aid of stick or knife; but let us spare it, leaving its 

 ingenious builder and occupant to finish, unmolested, his winter's 

 nap, to sleep on till the merry month of May ; and then, forcing 

 his wooden walls by help, it is said, of an expressly provided 

 acid, to expand his pencilled pinions on the evening air. 



But it might please you, curious companions of our rambles, 

 to see for yourselves, the pattern of those pretty pinions ; and 

 so in due time you shall, for we have at home almost a facsimile 

 of this wood-built cell, constructed under our own eye by a 

 brother artisan, a " Puss" Caterpillar, which, as a chrysalis, 

 now lives within it. Yonder is the wall of a kitchen garden. 

 Just under the coping of the wall, its only shelter, slung in 

 horizontal position, hangs a chrysalis, which by its shape, 

 angular instead of rounded, as well as by the open mode in 

 which it is exhibited, we recognize, at once, as a future Day- 

 flier; and by the colour, a greenish yellow, besprinkled with 

 black, no less than by its choice of situation, know it to have 

 been, in autumn, a Cabbage Caterpillar, to appear in spring 

 (though not perhaps till May) a large white garden Butterfly. 

 It hangs here attached to the wall by a double support, a silken 

 button at the tail, and a band or loop of threads round the 

 middle of the body, its last pieces of ingenious workmanship 

 while in the Caterpillar form ; and we perceive, also, a thin 

 silken web stretched over a small space of the brick above. 

 This is a preparation of its surface to receive the ends of the 

 supporting girth, which would not else adhere. 



But look ! What is flitting past us, even now ? In very sooth, 

 a "Devil's Butterfly" has come from the ivy overhead, or a 

 warmer place below, to reproach us for indifference to Butterfly 

 presence, or to upbraid yonder cabbage sleeper for still sleeping 

 on. There ! now she has settled, not on the elder clusters, nor 

 yet on the hazel flowers, but on this leafless hawthorn, and 



