The Puss Moth caterpillar is almost as curious. He, too, strikes fearsome attitudes. He has eye-markings to help him (you will have read about these elsewhere) and he can also squirt out an acid from underneath his chin. These two defences are probably most useful against animals and birds and lizards and creatures of that kind, but they do not seem to be much use against an ichneumon fly, and so Mother Nature has helped him further, by giving him two little pink whiplashes, which shoot out from the prongs at his tail end when he is really annoyed. When a fly comes near him he brandishes them as you see in the picture. [Illustration: THE GIANT WOOD WASP It has no poisonous sting, though it looks as if it had a very fine one] Our last sheep is the Giant Wood Wasp, who is not a wasp at all, and is much more common in this country than he used to be. He is a handsome black and yellow insect with a body about an inch long, and his wolf's clothing is his black and yellow colour. This is the commonest wolf's clothing of all. You know I expect that a number of stinging insects, wasps and bees, have a black and yellow, or black and red colouring, and you know too, I dare say, that there are a great many flies who have no stings but are coloured in much the same way. Well, it is thought that these flies without stings, of which the Giant Wood Wasp is one, may sometimes avoid attack because they frighten their enemies by looking as if they _had_ stings. Suppose a young sparrow ate a wasp, he would probably get stung, and it might happen that next time he saw a black and yellow fly, he would mistake it for a wasp and so not eat it. If this _did_ happen, the fly would have owed his life to being black and yellow. THE BEASTIES' BEDTIME (OCTOBER) [Illustration: THE QUEEN WASP IN HER WINTER SLEEP She puts her wings _underneath_ her body, so that they sha'n't get damaged, and holds on chiefly with her mouth] How would you like to sleep straightaway through the winter, and miss Guy Fawkes, and Christmas, and New Year, and Valentine's Day, and skating, and snowballing, and round games in the evening, and having stories read to you by the fire, and all those delightful things which come to cheer us when the weather is damp and gloomy, making us feel somehow that summer is a queer, impossible kind of time, just as in summer we find it hard to imagine what it feels like to be really cold? I want you to remember in this winter which is coming what a number of little creatures in the wide world around you are fast, fast asleep. I want you to think how wonderful it is that these little creatures are able to dream away the time when there is nothing for them to eat, and to wake again when there is food in plenty. [Illustration: BILL THE LIZARD]