Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/318

 ==CHAPTER IX: THE CATERPILLAR AND THE MOTH ==

"I'HE 1.1FE OF A CATERP1LLAR

la- is one of those bleak davs of early spring that so offen follow a period of warmth and sunshine, when living things seem led to believe the fine weather bas come to stay. Out in the woods a hand of little caterpillars is clinging to the surtce of something that appears to be an oral swelling near the end of a twig on a wild cherry tree (Fig. 143). The tinv. creatures, scarce a tenth of an inch in length, sit motionless, benumbed by the cold, many with bodies bent into hall circles as if too nearly ffozen to straighten out. Probably, however, they are all un- conscious and suffering nothing, l'et, if they were ca- l»able of it, they would be wondering what rate brought them into such a forbidding «orld. But rate in this case was disguised most likely in the warmth of yesterdav, which induced the caterpillars to leave the eggs in whi'ch they had safely passed the winter. The empty eggshells are inside the spindle-shaped thing that looks so like a swelling of the twig, for in fact this is merely a protective covering over a mass of eggs glued fast to the bark. The surface of the covering is perfor- ated by many little holes from which the caterpillars emerged, and "is swathed in a network of fine silk threads which the caterpillars spun over it to give themselves a surer footing and one they might cling to unconsciously in the event of adverse weather, such as that which makes them helpless now. A'hen nature designs any creature

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