If my surmise is well-founded, there is reason to believe that, with a view to speedily filling the silk-glands to which they look to supply them with ropes, other caterpillars beginning their existence on smooth and steeply-slanting leaves also take as their first mouthful the membranous sack which is all that remains of the egg.

The whole of the platform of birth-sacks which was the first camping-ground of the White Butterfly's family is razed to the ground; naught remains but the round marks of the individual pieces that composed it. The structure of piles has disappeared; the prints left by the piles remain. The little caterpillars are now on the level of the leaf which shall henceforth feed them. They are a pale orange-yellow, with a sprinkling of white bristles. The head is a shiny black and remarkably powerful; it already gives signs of the coming gluttony. The little animal measures scarcely two millimetres in length. (.078 inch.--Translator's Note.)

The troop begins its steadying-work as soon as it comes into contact with its pasturage, the green cabbage-leaf. Here, there, in its immediate neighbourhood, each grub emits from its spinning glands short cables so slender that it takes an attentive lens to catch a glimpse of them. This is enough to ensure the equilibrium of the almost imponderable atom.

The vegetarian meal now begins. The grub's length promptly increases from two millimetres to four. Soon, a moult takes place which alters its costume: its skin becomes speckled, on a pale-yellow ground, with a number of black dots intermingled with white bristles. Three or four days of rest are necessary after the fatigue of breaking cover. When this is over, the hunger-fit starts that will make a ruin of the cabbage within a few weeks.

What an appetite! What a stomach, working continuously day and night! It is a devouring laboratory, through which the foodstuffs merely pass, transformed at once. I serve up to my caged herd a bunch of leaves picked from among the biggest: two hours later, nothing remains but the thick midribs; and even these are attacked when there is any delay in renewing the victuals. At this rate a "hundredweight-cabbage," doled out leaf by leaf, would not last my menagerie a week.

The gluttonous animal, therefore, when it swarms and multiplies, is a scourge. How are we to protect our gardens against it? In the days of Pliny, the great Latin naturalist, a stake was set up in the middle of the cabbage-bed to be preserved; and on this stake was fixed a Horse's skull bleached in the sun: a Mare's skull was considered even better. This sort of bogey was supposed to ward off the devouring brood.

My confidence in this preservative is but an indifferent one; my reason for mentioning it is that it reminds me of a custom still observed in our own days, at least in my part of the country. Nothing is so long-lived as absurdity. Tradition has retained in a simplified form, the ancient defensive apparatus of which Pliny speaks. For the Horse's skull our people have substituted an egg-shell on the top of a switch stuck among the cabbages. It is easier to arrange; also it is quite as useful, that is to say, it has no effect whatever.

Everything, even the nonsensical, is capable of explanation with a little credulity. When I question the peasants, our neighbours, they tell me that the effect of the egg-shell is as simple as can be: the Butterflies, attracted by the whiteness, come and lay their eggs upon it. Broiled by the sun and lacking all nourishment on that thankless support, the little caterpillars die; and that makes so many fewer.

I insist; I ask them if they have ever seen slabs of eggs or masses of young caterpillars on those white shells.

"Never," they reply, with one voice.

"Well, then?"

"It was done in the old days and so we go on doing it: that's all we know; and that's enough for us."

I leave it at that, persuaded that the memory of the Horse's skull, used once upon a time, is ineradicable, like all the rustic absurdities implanted by the ages.

We have, when all is said, but one means of protection, which is to watch and inspect the cabbage-leaves assiduously and crush the slabs of eggs between our finger and thumb and the caterpillars with our feet. Nothing is so effective as this method, which makes great demands on one's time and vigilance. What pains to obtain an unspoilt cabbage! And what a debt do we not owe to those humble scrapers of the soil, those ragged heroes, who provide us with the wherewithal to live!

To eat and digest, to accumulate reserves whence the Butterfly will issue: that is the caterpillar's one and only business. The Cabbage-caterpillar performs it with insatiable gluttony. Incessantly it browses, incessantly digests: the supreme felicity of an animal which is little more than an intestine. There is never a distraction, unless it be certain see-saw movements which are particularly curious when several caterpillars are grazing side by side, abreast. Then, at intervals, all the heads in the row are briskly lifted and as briskly lowered, time after time, with an automatic precision worthy of a Prussian drill-ground. Can it be their method of intimidating an always possible aggressor? Can it be a manifestation of gaiety, when the wanton sun warms their full paunches? Whether sign of fear or sign of bliss, this is the only exercise that the gluttons allow themselves until the proper degree of plumpness is attained.