o 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 t