228 LITTLE FOLKS 
will sometimes have as many as thirty-two thousand of them. He 
needs all he has, however, for he has hosts of enemies, swifter to 
fly than he is — such as birds, and dragon-flies — and if he did not 
have eyes looking every way, he would stand little chance for his 
life. 
Another help to the Butterfly is his zigzag sort of flight. Birds 
who fly after him are constantly dodged, and thus he gets away. 
I have somewhere read an account of a bird chasing one Butterfly 
about for a long time, utterly unable to catch it, yet evidently very 
much astonished at his failure. 
Another safety for the Butterfly is the color of his wings. 
However gaudy the outside may be, you will notice that the inside 
or underside of the wings is generally of a duller color. Now, 
when a Butterfly is at rest, he holds his two wings (four wings 
rather) up over his back, nearly touching each other, so, of course, 
the bright side is hidden, and the dull colors on the underside har- 
monize with the tree on which he rests, and he is almost invisible. 
The picture at the head of this article is the Swallow-tailed 
Butterfly. He gets his name from the long sort of tails which you 
see on his second pair of wings. He is a great beauty, yellow and 
black, with six cloudy-blue spots on the lo^yer wings, and a large 
red spot at the end of those. 
When Mamma Swallow-tail, or Mrs. Papilio Machaon (which 
is her book name, you must know), gets ready to provide for the 
next generation, she lays a quantity of light-green eggs, fastening 
them on to some twig or plant with a sort of sticky gum, and 
leaves them to their fate. In due time, the green eggs grow black, 
the shells burst, and out come the small Caterpillars. Their first 
business is to eat, and they begin on the shell they have just come 
out of, and as they go on and grow, and throw off one skin after 
another, they never fail to eat up the old garment. Think of eat- 
ing up one's old clothes! 
The Caterpillar with that curious habit is a beauty, and per- 
haps you have seen it. It lives on fennel, or parsley, or carrot 
leaves. It is of a beautiful green color, with black bands around 
its body, and on the bands beautiful yellow spots. 
Here he is, as he looks when he is full grown, done feeding, 
and about to turn into a chrysalis; and on the right hand side 
of the same twig you can see how he looks when he is in that 
bundled-up state. 
