CHAPTER IX
THE CATERPILLAR AND THE MOTH
The Life of a Caterpillar
It is one of those bleak days of early spring that so often 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 band of little caterpillars is clinging to the surface of something that appears to be an oval swelling near the end of a twig on a wild cherry tree (Fig. 143). The tiny creatures, scarce a tenth of an inch in length, sit motionless, benumbed by the cold, many with bodies bent into half circles as if too nearly frozen to straighten out. Probably, however, they are all unconscious and suffering nothing, Yet, if they were capable of it, they would be wondering what fate brought them into such a forbidding world.
But fate in this case was disguised most likely in the warmth of yesterday, which induced the caterpillars to leave the eggs in which 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 perforated 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. When nature designs any creature
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