60 STKICTLY INCOG. 



buckthorn leaves, relieved by a very conspicuous red spot 

 which really represents in size and colour one of the berries 

 that grow around it. Finally the larva of the elephant 

 hawk-moth, which grows to a very large size, has a pair of 

 huge spots that seem Uke great eyes ; and direct experiment 

 establishes the fact that small birds mistake it for a young 

 snake, and stand in terrible awe of it accordingly, though 

 it is in reality a perfectly harmless insect, and also, as I 

 am credibly informed (for I cannot speak upon the point 

 from personal experience), a very tasty and well-flavoured 

 insect, and * quite good to eat ' too, says an eminent 

 authority. One of these big snake-like caterpillars once 

 frightened Mr. Bates himself on the banks of the Amazon. 

 Now, I know that cantankerous person, the universal 

 objector, has all along been bursting to interrupt me and 

 declare that he himself frequently finds no end of cater- 

 pillars, and has not the slightest difliculty at all in distin- 

 guishing them with the naked eye from the leaves and 

 plants among which they are lurking. But observe how 

 promptly we crush and demolish this very inconvenient 

 and disconcerting critic. The caterpillars he finds are 

 almost all hairy ones, very conspicuous and easy to discover 

 — 'woolly bears,' and such like common and unclean crea- 

 tures — and the reason they take no pains to conceal them- 

 selves from his unobservant eyes is simply this : nobody on 

 earth wants to discover them. For either they are pro- 

 tectively encased in horrid hairs, which get down your 

 throat and choke you and bother you (I speak as a bird, 

 from the point of view of a confirmed caterpillar eater), or 

 else they are bitter and nasty to the taste, like the larva of 

 the spurge moth and the machaon butterfly. These are 

 the ordinary brown and red and banded caterpillars that 

 the critical objoctor finds in hundreds on his peregrinations 

 about his own garden — commonplace things which the 



