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A NATURALIST ON THE PROWL. 
all these ; for do not think that caterpillars are to be picked 
up like shells on the sea-shore. Caterpillar hunting is an 
art, and if you wish to excel in it you must be well 
grounded in the principles of caterpillar life. Of these the 
most fundamental is that a caterpillar is a little creature 
ordained to be eaten. To avert this fate is the continual 
aim, not only of all it does, but of all it is. This may not 
seem quite logical, but I have no time to cavil just now. 
From books, and more especially from instructive little 
papers upon protective mimicry and such subjects, you will 
learn to take it for granted that when a caterpillar is eaten 
a bird is the eater. Unlearn this. Upon the whole I think 
birds are the least important of a caterpillar’s enemies. 
At first, when it is so minute that a bird would not be at 
the trouble to pick it up, it is exposed to the cruelty and 
rapacity of hordes of ants of many tribes, which scour 
every tree and shrub, sipping the nectar in the flowers, 
licking the glands at the bases of the leaves, milking the 
aphides , and looting and ravaging wherever they go. 
Besides ants, every tree swarms with spiders, not web 
spiders, but wolf spiders, which run about in quest of their 
prey. Then come wasps and ichneumons, and these, from 
the caterpillar point of view, are of two sorts, those which 
