When the terrarium is ready to furnish, you can have some nature-study trips in search of materials for it. Cover the floor with stones and place about three inches of good soil over them. Then you will be ready to select the carpet. Let this be of soft green moss, the prettiest bits that you can find on the forest floor. Leave one corner free for sods on which tall grasses grow, so that there will be a cozy nook for the orchestra (crickets, grasshoppers, katydids, and the like). What a fine concert there will be! Will the most conceited toad in the terrarium ever dare to raise his voice in song again after hearing it? Perhaps next spring we shall know. [Illustration: _Fig. 341. A shower for the little neighbors._] Even before the home is completed, you can gather your small guests about you. Temporary lodgings can be provided without much trouble. Fig. 342 illustrates a good insect cage, and a box containing damp moss and covered with mosquito netting will make fairly comfortable quarters for salamanders ("lizards") and toads. The first visitor that you welcome will probably be a little woolly-bear, a brown and black caterpillar that you see so often in your autumn walks (Fig. 343). He is one of my favorite insect friends, and I really like to have him snuggle up in a furry ball in my hand. You will find woolly-bear a very restless little creature. You never know what he is going to do next. He may spin a cocoon this fall or "he may curl up like a woodchuck," as Uncle John says, and sleep until spring. Then, if all goes well, he will spin his cocoon and come out an Isabella tiger-moth (Fig. 344). No matter how fast woolly-bear may be hurrying along the highway when you meet him, put him into the terrarium, for you will find that he is a most entertaining little fellow. If you have an insect net, sweep it among shrubs and weeds. I am hoping that when you look into it you will find "golden-eyes" or the lace-winged-fly. When you see the pretty little green creature you will wonder that her children can be called aphis-lions, for they are not at all like their mother (Fig. 345); but when you have watched them among the aphids or plant-lice, you will understand how they have earned their name. They have very long jaws and very large appetites.