LIFE IN A TERRARIUM.[22] BY ALICE I. KENT. And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying: "Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee." --_Longfellow to Agassiz._ [22] Nature-Study Quarterly No. 8: Leaflet 21, January, 1901. [Illustration] [Illustration: _Fig. 125. Life in the terrarium._] Fortunate are the children and the teachers who are so placed that Nature's story book is close at hand. But city children and their teachers need not despair, for Nature, the old nurse, is loving and bountiful and will rewrite, in living characters, many a page from the wondrous book, for those who care to read. One such a page may be a terrarium--a confined plot of earth on which things may live and grow (from _terra_, "earth," as aquarium is from _aqua_, "water"). Within its narrow confines, the whole drama of the beautiful life of many a tiny creature may be rewritten. Here is a fragment of the drama, as written in one terrarium. This terrarium was made from an old berry crate (Figs. 125, 126). When the children saw it first, last fall, this is what it looked like: a large rectangular box, grass-green in color, thirty-nine inches long, eighteen inches wide, and fifteen inches high. The long sides were of glass, the short sides and top of green wire netting. The top could be removed like the lid of a box. It stood upon a pedestal-table provided with castors. In the bottom of the terrarium were three inches of rich soil, covered with the delicate green of sprouting grass-seed. In one corner was a mossy nook, and in another a mass of thistles and clover. At one end, a small cabbage was planted and at the other lay several sprays of glossy pin-oak. Suspended from the top, was a large spray of purple thistles. [Illustration: _Fig. 126. Butterfly-time in the terrarium world._] Among the thistles in the corner, ten pendants of vivid green, bright with golden points, could be seen. They were the chrysalids of the monarch, or milkweed, butterfly. Among the cabbage leaves, were many of the pale green eggs and several of the caterpillars of the cabbage butterfly. Among the sprays of oak in the corner, several oak caterpillars were feeding.