Anxious to watch my caterpillars’ habits in detail, without having to sally forth by lantern-light, often in bad weather, to see what happens in the pine-trees at the end of the enclosure, I have installed half-a-dozen nests in a greenhouse, a modest, glazed shelter which, though hardly any warmer than the air outside, at least affords protection from the wind and rain. Fixed in the sand, at a height of about eighteen inches, by the base of the bough that serves as both an axis and a framework, each nest receives for rations a bundle of little pine-branches, which are renewed as soon as they are consumed. I take my lantern every evening and pay my boarders a visit. This is the way in which most of my facts are obtained. After the day’s work comes the evening meal. The caterpillars descend from the nest, adding a few more threads to the silvery sheath of the support, and reach the posy of fresh green stuff which is lying quite near. It is a magnificent sight to see the red-coated band lined up in twos and threes on each needle and in ranks so closely formed that the green sprigs of the bunch bend under the load. The diners, all motionless, all poking their heads forward, nibble in silence, placidly. Their broad black foreheads gleam in the rays of the lantern. A shower of granules drops on the sand below. These are the residues of easy-going stomachs, only too ready to digest their food. By to-morrow morning the soil will have disappeared under a greenish layer of this intestinal hail. Yes, indeed, it is a sight to see, one far more stimulating than that of the Silk-worms’ mess-room. Young and old, we are all so much interested in it that our evenings almost invariably end in a visit to the greenhouse caterpillars. The meal is prolonged far into the night. Satisfied at last, some sooner, some later, they go back to the nest, where for a little longer, feeling their silk-glands filled, they continue spinning on the surface. These hard workers would scruple to cross the white carpet without contributing a few threads. It is getting on for one or even two o’clock in the morning when the last of the band goes indoors. My duty as a foster-father is daily to renew the bunch of sprigs, which are shorn to the last leaf; on the other hand, my duty as an historian is to enquire to what extent the diet can be varied. The district supplies me with Processionaries on the Scotch pine, the maritime pine and the Aleppo pine indifferently, but never on the other Coniferæ. Yet one would think that any resin-scented leaf ought to suit. So says chemical analysis.