A NOVEL VISITOR. 
337 
tlieless, seem able to live with man, to appreciate peaceable people and 
mildness of character. Last winter, two pretty red lad} r -birds had 
taken up their residence on our table, among our books and papers, 
which were being constantly moved about. What to give them, we 
knew not; they passed the whole season without eating, or appearing 
to receive any injury. The warmth of the apartment seemed agreeable 
to them. 
A strong September wind is now blowing, and, this very day, has 
cast in upon us a beautiful reddish-coloured caterpillar. Though she 
had not come of her own accord, but in spite of herself, we felt that 
we ought to respect misfortune. We did not know from what plant 
she had been torn, but supposed from her motions that she had been 
carried away at the moment she had begun to spin. We presented her 
with a variety of leaves; but none of them pleased her taste. She 
moved to and fro, displaying an extraordinary agitation. We sup¬ 
posed she wished to find rest upon a branch, but the rain fell in torrents. 
As many caterpillars and larvse work underground, we brought it some 
earth. But this, too, was useless. Thinking she might like a web 
at a time when she was engaged in weaving, we placed her on the 
lace-work of a cushion which lay in the window; but the lace was 
cold and coarse, and did not please her. Moreover, the wind, the little 
wind which entered, would have cruelly frozen her during a whole 
winter. Finally, by a feminine marvel of intuition, we concluded that, 
since she was about to weave silk, she would like the silk-velvet lining 
of our microscope. 
Plainly, it was the very thing she herself would have chosen. In¬ 
stalled in the evening, by the morning she had made herself at home in 
this soft, warm, and sheltered place. She had already spun, and hastily 
extended her threads to right and left, as if fearing she might be 
disturbed. Then, during the day, her work having been respected, she 
saw that she had miscalculated her measurements, and that her cocoon 
was too short; she destroyed a third of it, to resume the fabric from 
that point on better proportions. 
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