98 MAG-PIE CATERPILLARS. 



for as we look about us, not a living thing, or one like it, can 

 we see, except that rogue of a thrush, busy yonder at a 

 currant bush. Suppose we watch him, and see if he may not 

 prove a guide, an indicator to assist us in our search. What 

 is he about? Plucking and picking at the bare branches, 

 when meanwhile, close beside him, lies a snail, one of his 

 favourite morsels. There goes the quick-eared songster, put 

 to flight even by our stealthy step ; but let him go, we shall 

 find out, all the same, the business he's been after. Aye, aye, 

 Sir Thrush, we even thought so, thy large bright eye has been 

 quicker than our own, for all our boasted spectacles, in dis- 

 covering, before us, the very game for which we have been 

 hunting. We are not so clever as thou art in detection of life, 

 clothed in the garb of death. On this branch of the currant 

 bush, where thou wast so busy, remains a trio of stiff, stick-like 

 little animals, more like twigs than Caterpillars, and distin- 

 guishable only from the branch itself, neither by form nor 

 motion, but slightly by colour, which instead of brown, is 

 whitish yellow, besprinkled with black. These are the Mag- 

 pie Caterpillars of the Mag-pie Moth, numbers of which, so 

 called from their mode of colouring, are to be seen in almost 

 every garden, flying heavily through the twilight of summer's 

 evenings ; and from the eggs of one of them, deposited on this 

 currant branch, came forth, in autumn, the curious specimens 

 of "still life" now before us. In these we have an instance, 

 among others, of Caterpillars defended through the winter by & 



