86 NATURE’S CRAFTSMEN 
fectly, and the outside of the garment was then 
ready to stitch. 
Imagine a caterpillar sewing a seam! That 
was about all the interested children could do, for 
though they saw the fuzzy body moving slowly 
down the length of the “ garment,” they could 
not get the ins and outs of the process. More¬ 
over, when the job was completed, it needed a mi¬ 
croscope to detect the seam! Clever little tailor! 
How had he managed? Whence came his thread? 
“ He did not spin it, that is certain,” declared 
Alice. “A caterpillar does not have spinnerets 
like a spider.” 
“ I know,” cried Max. “ Don’t you remember 
the pine processionaries? They dribbled their 
thread from their mouths. No doubt this fellow 
did the same.” 
“ To be sure,” affirmed Tommy. “At the 
back of his jaws is a sort of little flat lip, through 
which comes a very fine tube. The ‘ silk factory ’ 
is located at the other end of this tube. It is a 
complex piece of machinery, and I doubt if even 
the caterpillar himself knows how it works! He 
doesn’t need to, so long as it never fails to pro¬ 
duce the goods.” 
“Funny sort of a coat, isn’t it?” murmured 
Alice, her dressmaker’s eye quite taken with the 
trim little cylinder. “ What is he about now? 
Ah, look! he is fastening it skillfully back under 
