142 



THE -CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



liiglier order. By what powers of perception was this butterfly enaLled 

 to tell that this plant, which she had never seen before, that cannot 

 endure our climate hut must he kept in a warm greenhouse, belonged 

 to that genus of plants whicli were the proper food of her young ? 

 We attain to such knowledge only by much study and comparison J . 

 she sailing past on careless wing, without having read the first lesson 

 in botany, knows the foreigner to be a milk-weed, and stops to deposit 

 her eggs upon it, that when the young larva? hatch out they may have 

 suitable food at hand. 



The eggs she lays are very small, conical objects, about the twenty- 

 fifth part of an inch long, white at first, but in two or three days 

 turning yellow, and then just before the time of hatching they become 

 a dull grey. If one of these eggs is examined with a microscope it is 

 seen to be covered witli a beautiful net-work of raised lines, the longi- 

 tudinal lines appearing like ribs joined together by cross lines, and 

 coming together at the apex. The lower part of the egg, by which it 

 adheres to one of the leaf-ril)s on the under side of the leaf, is flattened, 

 giving the egg the appearance of a truncated cone, or of one of those 

 conical bullets, which are 

 used in breech-loading rifles. 

 If the reader will look at fig. 

 11, a, he will see a magnifi- 

 ed representation of the 

 egg, showing the. longitudial 

 ribs and cross lines ; and at 

 c, the egg of natural size, at- 

 tached to the rib on the 

 under side of the leaf, just as the butterfly places it. 



In about a week after the butterfly has deposited the egg, there 

 hatches from it a very small caterpillar, not more than the tenth of an 

 inch long. It however grows very rapidly, and soon becomes too large 

 for its jacket. But its jacket is very accommodating, and when the 

 little fellow has got tired of it and wants a new one, the old one splits 

 down the back, so that he can crawl out of it with a new jacket on, and 

 looking as bright and gay as any new suit. And now it is a very pretty 

 little creature, with transverse bands of black, yellow, and white, and 

 a pair of black horns near the head, and another pair not quite so long 

 near the other end If it is examined with a microscope a few black 



Fio-. 11. 



