Enclosed within the moving bundle is a fairly well-developed caterpillar, prettily striped in black and white. Seeking for food or perhaps for a spot where the transformation can be effected, he hurries along timidly, attired in a queer rig-out of twigs from which nothing emerges except the head and the front part of the body, which is furnished with six short legs. At the least alarm he goes right in and does not budge again. This is the whole secret of the little roaming bundle of sticks. The faggot caterpillar belongs to the Psyche group, whose name conveys an allusion to the classic Psyche, symbolical of the soul. We must not allow this phrase to carry our thoughts to loftier heights than is fitting. The nomenclator, with his rather circumscribed view of the world, did not trouble about the soul when inventing his descriptive label. He simply wanted a pretty name; and certainly he could have hit on nothing better. To protect himself from the weather, our chilly, bare-skinned Psyche builds himself a portable shelter, a travelling cottage which the owner never leaves until he becomes a Moth. It is something better than a hut on wheels with a thatched roof to it: it is a hermit’s frock, made of an unusual sort of frieze. In the valley of the Danube the peasant wears a goatskin cloak fastened with a belt of rushes. The Psyche dons an even more rustic apparel. He makes himself a suit of clothes out of hop-poles. It is true that, beneath this rude conglomeration, which would be a regular hair-shirt to a skin as delicate as his, he puts a thick lining of silk. The Clythra Beetle garbs himself in pottery; this one dresses himself in a faggot. In April, on the walls of my chief observatory, that famous pebbly acre with its wealth of insect life, I find the Psyche who is to furnish me with my most circumstantial and detailed records. [25] He is at this period in the torpor of the approaching metamorphosis. As we can ask him nothing else for the moment, let us look into the construction and composition of his faggot. It is a not irregular structure, spindle-shaped and about an inch and a half long. The pieces that compose it are fixed in front and free at the back, are arranged anyhow and would form a rather ineffective shelter against the sun and rain if the recluse had no other protection than his thatched roof.