BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS 



29 



From the fuzzy caterpillars that spin webs on trees in 

 the fall small white moths come out during the following 

 spring. 



Raise a few different kinds of caterpillars in a cage, to find 

 out what kind of butterflies or moths they become. 



How Butterflies and Moths eat. Butterflies and moths live 

 principally by sucking honey from flowers through their long 

 hollow tongues. On many kinds you can easily see the tongue 

 coiled up like a clock spring. Many kinds have no tongues, 

 and do not eat in the winged form. 



Enemies of Butterflies and Moths. Of all the worms and 

 caterpillars that are hatched out each summer, only a few 

 become winged 

 insects. The rest 

 are eaten up by 

 other creatures. 

 A song bird eats 

 dozens of cater- 

 pillars each sum- 

 mer's day, and all 

 through the win- 

 ter the woodpeck- 

 ers, chickadees, 



and other birds are seeking the pupas under the bark of trees 

 and in the shelter of fences. 



Small insects also destroy the larger ones. On tomato and 

 potato vines you sometimes see green caterpillars whose backs 

 are covered with white things that look like grains of rice. 

 These are cocoons, and were spun by tiny worms that had been 

 living in the tomato worm's flesh. If you should try to keep 

 the tomato worm, it would soon die, but from' each cocoon you 

 would get a small black fly (ichneumon fly) that would lay 

 its eggs beneath another tomato worm's skin if it had the 

 chance. Flies like these are plentiful, and their young destroy 

 many of the caterpillars that escape the birds. 



TOMATO WORM AND COCOONS OF ICHNEUMON FLIES 



