THE NATURALIST IN HIS VERANDAH. 29 



set before him. By the time he had been at work, 

 exactly four minutes, he had eaten away a round hole in 

 the calyx ; at the end of ten minutes he had eaten so much 

 of the inside of the bud that fully one-fourth of his body had 

 become lost to view ! Caterpillars have many enemies. 

 They are defenceless creatures, with soft succulent bodies, 

 and a number of animals, such as birds, ants, spiders 

 and wasps, are constantly on the lookout for these dainty 

 dishes. Caterpillars, therefore, have to adopt all manner of 

 devices to escape being seen. Thus many of them feed at 

 night. This the carnation-infesting caterpillar does, but 

 he goes one better : during the day he gets inside a bud 

 and eats away in perfect security. This morning I picked 

 a white carnation which had just expanded and put it in 

 my button hole. In a short time, to my surprise, the petals 

 began to drop one by one. Then I noticed a caterpillar 

 inside the flower whose nibbling had caused the petals to 

 drop off. So neatly had he stowed himself away in the 

 base of the flower that when I plucked it I noticed nothing 

 wrong. That caterpillar is now on a cigarette tin devouring 

 voraciously what remains of the unfortunate carnation. 



On my verandah some seedlings are growing : the leaves 

 of one of them bear the marks of the ravages of an herbi- 

 vorous animal. The offender is now starving to death in a 

 tin box on my daftar table. He is a caterpillar, which any 

 but an experienced eye would take to be a little mass of 

 sand and twigs. In order to escape detection this wily 

 creature secreted from all parts of his body a sticky fluid, 

 and rolled in the sand so as to secure a coating of that 

 material. He next rubbed up against every little dead 

 stick he came across, until he now looks for all the world 

 like a bundle of twigs. He acts up to his disguise. He 

 will remain motionless for any length of time, and when 

 he does move, his gait is so slow as not to be visible to the 

 human eye. Thus, this impostor is able to feed in broad 

 daylight secure from the hungry birds and wasps who all 

 around are on the lookout for caterpillars. I caught him 



