LESSON XXIV.
LIFE AMONG SNOW AND ROSES.
I told you that the butterfly did no work, built no house, and showed very little sense. That is true of the full-grown butterfly. He seems so pleased with his wings that he does nothing but enjoy them.
But you must know that the caterpillar is only one state of the butterfly, and there are caterpillars which build for themselves very curious houses.
A FROSTY MORNING.
A FROSTY MORNING.
There are caterpillars which leave the egg in the autumn. They live as caterpillars all winter, and enter the pupa state in the spring. Let us watch them, as they live with the snow-flakes flying about them. Then we will watch them to the time of roses.
Many butterflies lay their eggs singly. They put one egg alone, on the tip of a willow, hazel, poplar, or oak leaf. Other butterflies put their eggs in small clusters on the underside of carrot, nettle, or blackberry leaves. Some put eggs in a ring, around an elm or birch twig.
Now and then you find the eggs in a chain or pyramid, hanging upon a leaf.There are, also, some butterflies which drop their eggs on the ground among the grasses, or on the lower parts of grass blades.
In all cases the caterpillar feeds on the plant on which he is hatched from the egg. When he is ready to come out of the egg all he has to do is to bite a hole in his shell and crawl forth. Then, at once, he begins to eat.
He may begin at the tip of the leaf, and eat up to the mid-vein on both sides. He is careful not to bite the mid-vein. When he has had a full meal, he goes and lies along the mid-vein to rest. Then, when rested, he eats again. Many do this, but not all.
When one leaf is finished, he takes the next one on the twig. After the first leaf he is not so careful to begin at the tip. He just bites out pieces anywhere, but he does not bite the big vein. Perhaps it is too hard. Perhaps he knows he must have it for a roadway.
Do you remember what you read in the First Nature Reader about the spider, which has in her body little knobs for spinning silk?[22]The caterpillar has a silk-spinner. It is in the underside of his head. It is a little tube in the shape of a cone.
Did you ever notice the queer way a caterpillar has of wagging his head from side to side? He acts as if in great pain. But he is not in pain. He is only laying down a silk web with that motion.
It is by means of this silk that the caterpillar makes his home. Let us look at him while he works. He fastens his line to the edge of a leaf. Then he carries it to the other edge, or to the next leaf. Then another line, and so on. Each line is a little shorter than the one before. This bends the leaf. At last it is bent into a tube, or box, or several leaves are bound into a bower.
The caterpillar bites a notch, or line, in the tip of the leaf to make it bend over for a roof. Is not that cunning? Think how strange it is, that a tiny thing, just out of the egg, away up alone on a tree, should know how to build this pretty house!
The caterpillar of the swallow-tail chooses a leaf for a home, weaves a silk carpet over it, and lies along the mid-vein. What do you think he does on rainy days, when the water begins to take his bent leaf for a spout or gutter?
He builds a second floor of silk, a little higher up, between the edges of the leaf. That makes a nice, dry, silk hammock. There he lies, while the water ripples along the mid-vein below him. I suppose the sound of the water sings him to sleep.
A caterpillar which makes a bag of a nettle leaf, for a nest, lies in it so snug that he is too lazy to go out for food. So he eats up his roof for his dinner! Another caterpillar draws a leaf together into a pretty little pocket. He weaves silk over it, outside and in, and then,—he eats up this dear little home, and has to make another!
These caterpillars make their homes for summer. There are some which need winter homes. The caterpillar of the Viceroy butterfly is only half-grown when winter comes. He lives in a willow-tree. He makes his warm winter house of a willow leaf.
How does he do it? He eats part of the leaf away to the mid-vein. Then he bends the lower part together, with silk. He fastens the edges tight and lines the inside with silk. Then he covers the outside with silk, and binds the nest to the twig with a silk thread, by crawling around and around, drawing the silk with him.
The fierce winter storms will not tear off this house, which he has bound to the tree. The silk he uses is of a brown, dry-leaf color. When the house is made, he crawls in, head first. The knobbed hind end of his body fills up the open part of the nest. Did you ever hear of caterpillars called “woolly-bears,” because of their furry bodies?
This caterpillar has a little cousin, who makes his winter home of a bent birch leaf. The color of his silk, and the knobbed end of his body, are just the gray-purple of young birch buds. So, in the spring, no bird notices him. Thus, while the snow flies, these caterpillars lie safe in their warm homes. They are torpid.
Early in the spring they become pupæ, and then butterflies. Some butterflies pass the winter as eggs, some as caterpillars, some as pupæ. Some butterflies have two or more broods in the summer. Thus we have new butterflies every week.
Full-grown butterflies sometimes live over winter. They come out in the spring, looking rather shabby, and with the edges of their wings broken. When frost comes, they creep into some crack, or under a piece of tree-bark, or down among the roots. As they lay their wings flat against each other, a small crevice will hold them.
But the glad time of the butterflies is in the summer, when they have wings, honey, and sunshine. Some live from May until September. Some come out in April, and live only through May. Some wait until July and August. Others come for a little time in the spring, and a second brood in October. Of these many lie torpid in cracks over winter.
At night, and during rainy days, butterflies hide, as they do in cold weather. They seldom fly abroad before nine in the morning. Between four and five in the afternoon they begin to steal off to bed. They are out in full force in those bright, hot noon hours, when the flowers are at their best. Happy butterfly, he flits about in the sun and drinks honey all the time of roses!
FOOTNOTES:[22]Nature Reader, No. 1, p. 54.
[22]Nature Reader, No. 1, p. 54.
[22]Nature Reader, No. 1, p. 54.