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Butterflies and Moths: Shown to the Children

9781465665508
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
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Overview
IN this little book I want to tell you something about the common butterflies and moths which you may find in almost all parts of the country. But, first of all, I think that perhaps I had better say something about what we generally call their “life-history.” Of course you know that butterflies and moths are not butterflies and moths to begin with. They enter the world in the form of eggs, just as birds and fishes do. These eggs are often very beautiful indeed. You may find them on the leaves of different plants, sometimes on the upper side and sometimes on the lower side. And if you look at them through a good strong magnifying-glass—or, better still, through a microscope—you will find that some are shaped like little sugar-loaves, and some like acorns, and some like tiny melons, while they are nearly always covered with raised patterns which one might almost think must have been cut by fairy chisels. In course of time these eggs hatch, and out come a number of little caterpillars, which at once begin to eat the leaves of the plant on which the eggs were laid. They have most wonderful appetites, and hardly ever stop feeding all day long. The consequence is, of course, that they grow very quickly; and in a few days’ time they find that their jackets are much too tight for them. Then a most curious thing happens. Their skins split right down the back, and they wriggle and twist about, and rub themselves against the surrounding objects, till at last they manage to creep out of them altogether and appear in new ones, which had been gradually forming underneath the old!

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