HOUSE AND GARDEN 
August, 1913 
legs of all kinds: if they build nests either out of silk or by roll¬ 
ing leaves, they are pretty certain to be moths; cut worms (the 
gardener will know what is meant) are young moths, as are also 
fuzzy caterpillars, caterpillars with a single horn at the hind end 
and those which are larger than a man’s little finger. 
When a caterpillar is full grown it gets ready to moult once 
more. If it be a young moth it usually spins a silken covering 
—the cocoon—or goes into the ground. The silk of commerce 
is the silk which young moths make for their protection. If it be 
a young butterfly, it fastens the hind end of its body to some 
support and may also pass a sin¬ 
gle thread around what might be 
called its shoulders. Having thus 
made itself secure, its skin bursts 
and a very different thing is re¬ 
vealed. It is the pupa, motion¬ 
less except for convulsive twitch- 
ings, without free antennas, legs, 
wings or appendages of any 
kind. It has every appearance 
of death, and has been aptly used 
as a symbol of human death, for 
it is not lasting. In the course 
of time the creature within bursts 
its bonds and emerges in all the 
beauty of perfect maturity. The 
pupal stage is the stage of trans¬ 
formation from the crawling worm feeding on leaves to the free- 
flying butterfly sipping nectar from the flowers in your garden. 
Unfortunately, cold fact chills 
to some extent the glow of 
poetry. The adult life of butter¬ 
flies and moths is usually short. 
Some have no mouths at all or 
provision for feeding, and those 
which have are as apt to use 
them to sip water from road¬ 
side puddles or barnyard pools as 
they are to suck the nectar from 
some beautiful blossom. The 
mouths are coiled tubes, admira¬ 
bly adapted to the purpose. In¬ 
deed, the attraction water has 
for the butterfly is taken advan¬ 
tage of by the museum explorers 
who seek the rare insects partial 
to the blossoms of tall trees. A 
mirror placed on the ground 
brings them to earth, as it is 
mistaken for a small pool. 
I think it was Burroughs who 
said that all nature is a tragedy. 
Some of these tragedies are en¬ 
acted in the pupal stage or, more 
strictly, are concluded there, for 
when the butterfly is still a cater¬ 
pillar, wasp-like insects or cer¬ 
tain flies frequently lay their 
eggs on or in it and their young 
feed inside the young butterfly. 
After the caterpillar pupates, the 
parasite completes its work of 
destruction and pupates also'; 
Later a full-grown wasp-like insect or fly emerges instead of a 
butterfly and leaves an ugly-looking hole in the side of the 
chrysalis. 
After all, it depends upon the viewpoint. This was a tragedy 
for the butterfly, but not for the parasite, and we look upon it as 
a tragedy because our sympathy is all with the butterfly. Two 
moths, the Gypsy and the Brown-tail, were recently introduced 
from Europe into the vicinity of Boston, and their larvae started 
to eat the leaves of all the deciduous trees. The damage amounted 
to millions of dollars, because the parasites which keep these in¬ 
sects in check were not imported with them. The United States 
Government is now importing parasites as a last resort, and our 
sympathy is with the parasite. 
The only butterfly whose larvae do considerable damage is also 
an immigrant from Europe. It 
is the white cabbage butterfly 
( Pieris rapae ), the one which is 
yellowish on the underside but 
has no silver spots there. Usu¬ 
ally the male has a black dot on 
the upper surface of each front 
wing and the female two, while 
both sexes have the front corners 
black, but in the spring genera¬ 
tion these marks are apt to be 
absent or faint. 
The cabbage butterfly passes 
the winter as a chrysalis (the 
name given to the pupae of but¬ 
terflies), but the Mourning Cloak 
winters as an adult, coming out 
from its shelter in a hollow tree or under a pile of stones to warm 
itself in the first genial sun of spring. When autumn comes, the 
Monarchs, whose young fed on 
the juicy leaves of the milk¬ 
weed, assemble in large numbers, 
hanging from the leaves and 
branches of trees and shrubs. 
These flocks then move south to 
spend the winter there. 
Although the main outline of 
the lives of all butterflies and 
moths is the same, there are 
countless variations of detail. 
These details can be worked out 
by the amateur with the greatest 
of pleasure to himself and profit 
to his health. The material 
comes to your garden or flits be¬ 
fore you as you take your strolls. 
There is the yellow Papilio 
whose female occasionally puts 
on black (we do not know why) 
instead of the normal yellow ; 
the Skippers of more kinds than 
there are steamship lines, the 
Nymphs, with their conspicuous 
eye spots. All have something 
of interest about them, and prac¬ 
tically nothing can be said 
against any of our native forms, 
even in their youth, though you 
may have heard certain alarm¬ 
ists speak discouragingly to the 
contrary. 
Perhaps you may be persuad¬ 
ed to remember this as you go 
through your garden and to poison the foreigner “more in 
sorrow than in anger,” for even he reaches a maturity, 
if he can, which is pleasing to the eye not filled with 
cabbages. 
Two stages of papilio. The caterpillar’s only true legs are the 
three front pairs; when the scales are removed from the butter¬ 
fly’s wing a mere tissue skeleton remains 
In early autumn the Monarch butterflies migrate in huge flocks 
which, when they settle on a tree, swarm among the leaves in 
countless thousands 
