These macrocephalous ones are, as we see, well-armed against the hardness of the pine-needles, so well-armed in fact that the meal begins almost immediately. After roaming for a few moments at random among the scales of the common cradle, most of the young caterpillars make for the double leaf that served as an axis for the native cylinder and spread themselves over it at length. Others go to the adjacent leaves. Here as well as there they fall to; and the gnawed leaf is hollowed into faint and very narrow grooves, bounded by the veins, which are left intact. From time to time, three or four who have eaten their fill fall into line and walk in step, but soon separate, each going his own way. This is practice for the coming processions. If I disturb them ever so little, they sway the front half of their bodies and wag their heads with a jerky movement similar to the action of an intermittent spring. But the sun reaches the corner of the window where the careful rearing is in progress. Then, sufficiently refreshed, the little family retreats to its native soil, the base of the double leaf, gathers into an irregular group and begins to spin. Its work is a gauze globule of extreme delicacy, supported on some of the neighbouring leaves. Under this tent, a very wide-meshed net, a siesta is taken during the hottest and brightest part of the day. In the afternoon, when the sun has gone from the window, the flock leaves its shelter, disperses around, sometimes forming a little procession within a radius of an inch, and starts browsing again. Thus the very moment of hatching proclaims talents which age will develop without adding to their number. In less than an hour from the bursting of the egg, the caterpillar is both a processionary and a spinner. He also flees the light when taking refreshment. We shall soon find him visiting his grazing-grounds only at night. The spinner is very feeble, but so active that in twenty-four hours the silken globe attains the bulk of a hazel-nut and in a couple of weeks that of an apple. Nevertheless, it is not the nucleus of the great establishment in which the winter is to be spent. It is a provisional shelter, very light and inexpensive in materials. The mildness of the season makes anything else unnecessary. The young caterpillars freely gnaw the logs, the poles between which the threads are stretched, that is to say, the leaves contained within the silken tent. Their house supplies them at the same time with board and lodging. This excellent arrangement saves them from having to go out, a dangerous proceeding at their age. For these puny ones, the hammock is also the larder.