Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/326

292 It is very funny to see them. They hang themselves up head down from the corner of a fence, or some such place, and spin round and round,  leaving themselves in the middle. They lie like that ever so long, and then they hatch out  and eat their way through. They have to take good care of themselves while their wings are  growing, for fear something will eat them up.

“In the silkworm, they wait till they have spun, and then they bake the cocoons to kill  the animal inside, or else he would eat out. Then they unwind the silk. Each one lays about six or seven hundred eggs, so they can  afford to kill a few.

“Some of the insects of this class are not so pleasant to have. The canker-worm belongs to it, and so does the moth that gets into houses  and eats up woollen things.

“All caterpillars change their skins several times, getting a new one whenever it outgrows  the old one. Some caterpillars have great appetites. One kind eats every day twice as much cabbage leaf as it weighs, as if I ate one hundred and seventy-five pounds of beef a day.”

Rob’s somewhat mixed assortment of facts