

LEPIDOPTERA. 
old skin, despairing of ever being able to manage it, abandoned 
it where it was so solidly fixed. We represent (Hig. 107), rather 
magnified, the chrysalis arrived at its final state, and suspended to 
a branch of a tree by a network of silk.* 
We come now to the mode of suspension 
employed by those caterpillars which, after 
having fixed themselves by the tail, strengthen 
the support by means of a small silk cord 
passed round their body. 
It is again to Réaumur, that indefatigable 
observer of the habits of insects, that we go 
for the details of this manner of suspension. 
According to Réaumur, these caterpillars 
make and put on this belt in three different pio. 107,—Pupa divested of 
ways. But of these three ways the simplest, Dae 
and the least liable to meet with accident, is that employed by 
the larva of the Cabbage Butterfly (Preris brassice). When 
the time for its metamorphosis is only a few days distant, one 
may observe this caterpillar engaged in stretching threads 
from different parts of the case in which it is confined. It then 
chooses a spot, which it covers entirely with threads, some more 
compact than the others, and disposed in layers, which cross 
each other in different directions. These threads form a thin 
white cloth, against which the belly of the caterpillar and 
that of the chrysalis are later applied. Very soon we see a 
small hillock of silk rising. The caterpillar hooks itself on 
to this by the nails of its hinder feet, and sets to work to secure 
itself. 
To understand this process, it suffices to know that after having 
lengthened its body to a certain point, this caterpillar can turn 
back. its head on to its back, and reach to the fifth ring, 
having its three pairs of true legs in the air. But without 
putting the caterpillar into such an unnatural position, let us take 
it in a position in which it is simply bent sideways in such a 
manner that its head, with the thread-spinning apparatus, which 
is below, can be applied opposite and pretty near to one of the 

* It has been remarked that only those whose continuance in the pupal state is 
short, undergo their metamorphosis in this apparently inconvenient position.—Kp, 
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