CATERPILLARS. 
127 
on which butterflies and moths are constructed. It better 
becomes the grubs of beetles. Others build them houses 
of leaves, joining their edges with silk, or curling them 
spirally, and some make the most wonderful coats of 
strong thorns. A small moth caterpillar, which feeds 
on the water lily, cuts off a bit of a leaf, with which it 
forms a boat and sails away on the surface of the water. 
Another, which may be ranked among our domestic 
animals, feeds on our clothes and wraps itself in a woolly 
mantle made of the nap. Yet another makes itself a 
portable boat-shaped house of silk, coated with fine sand, 
in which it walks the walls of our houses, feeding, I 
believe, on invisible moss or mould. 
But of all the defensive works I have seen, the most 
advanced is that of a delicately beautiful butterfly called 
IAmenitis procris. When the caterpillar comes out of 
the egg, it betakes itself at once to the very point of a 
tender leaf and eats down steadily on both sides of the 
mid-rib, which stands out bare and dry. As the little 
thing advances it cuts up much more of the leaf than 
it eats, and these crumbs, with other refuse, are gradually 
accumulated and loosely bound together with silk till they 
form a breastwork across the whole breadth of the leaf. 
