10 
EGGS OF CATERPILLARS. 
thanks to the mother moth or butterfly who laid 
them there; for Nature has given her a gum, 
that she uses to stick them to the 
leaf. The gum makes a coating, 
like varnish, and is useful in two 
the 
leaf, and it screens them from cold 
wet weather. 
Now the shell of these little 
eggs is not brittle, like a bird’s 
egg. It is, in fact, no shell, but 
a transparent skin; and has no 
lime in it, for lime, as I dare say 
you know, gives to the hen’s egg its whiteness 
and brittleness. Then, the eggs of birds are 
pretty much the same in shape; but the little 
eggs I am talking about, are all manner of 
shapes. Sometimes they are round, sometimes 
like a cone, or else like a flask, or long and 
narrow, like a carraway seed. There is no end 
to their varieties. 
And just the same may be said of their colors. 
Those laid on the nettle are green, exactly like 
the plant; those on the grey bark of the willow 
are purple, and those on the cracks and crevices 
of the elm are of a light pink. On the poplar 
they are of a shining brown, and on the cabbage 
leaf you would find them yellow. The color of 
ways ; it keeps them fast upon 
