e pull out their silky
hairs, and with these and the silk they can spin they make a soft,
silken cocoon. Some make over their last skin into a hard covering. The
monarch butterfly does this.

"And there is a troublesome creature called the clothes moth--Mrs. Reece
can tell you about that--who lays its eggs on anything woollen it can
find. After a while a baby clothes moth, a whitish worm, hatches out.
Then this little fellow eats the fibres of the wool, and finally spins a
cocoon out of these fibres and its own silk.

"Some caterpillars are leaf-rollers--that is, when they pupate they roll
over the corners of a leaf, make themselves a neat hammock, and there
lie quite still in a cool and comfortable place to sleep."

Poor Peter had tumbled over, his head on Mrs. Reece's lap. Betty and
Hope, wide awake, were thinking just as much of the wonderful tent in
which they were to sleep as of the butterflies and moths. They were wide
awake enough to point their fingers at sleepy Peter.

"I think there is one kind of moth," said Mrs. Reece, stroking Peter's
silky hair, "that spins something almost as soft as this."

"Softer," affirmed Ben Gile; "and that is the silk-worm."

"Does the caterpillar make the silk our dresses are made from?" asked
Betty.

"Yes, indeed. The mother moth is a creamy-white. She lays several
hundred eggs; from each of these eggs comes a little worm. These little
worms have been cared for so long by men that they don't know how to
take care of themselves any more.

"They like to eat the leaves of the mulberry-tree. If these leaves are
not to be found they will sometimes eat lettuce. For forty-five days
they eat as fast as they can, which is a good deal faster than greedy
children can eat.

"Every ten days or so they cast aside their old skin and come out in a
new one. After the last moulting of the skin the worm begins to spin a
cocoon about itself. At first the cocoon is not very smooth, but in a
while the worm gets well started and spins the rest of it with one long,
silky thread."

"Isn't that wonderful!" exclaimed one of the guides. "I suppose that
silk is finer than the finest trout-line."

"A hundred times finer," answered Ben. "Usually it is three hundred
yards long. Before the pupa has a chance to make its way out, and so
destroy the long, silken thread, the man who has taken such care of the
worm drops the cocoon into boiling water, which kills the pupa at once.
Then the precious silk