After a preliminary stripping, the little caterpillars are now lodged in a cardboard box, which I place in the sunniest corner of my window. The temperature here is well over 100° F. No matter: the swan’s-down sack is remade at a sitting of a few hours. Tropical heat and the quiet that goes with darkness have made no difference in the insect’s habits. Neither the degree of heat nor the degree of light explains the pressing need of raiment. Where are we to seek the reason for that hurry to get clad? I can see none save a presentiment of the future. The Psyche caterpillar has the winter before him. He knows nothing of a common shelter in a silken purse, of cabins among close-touching leaves, of underground cells, of retreats under old cracked bark, of hairy roofs, of cocoons, in short of the different methods employed by other caterpillars to protect themselves against the severity of the weather. He has to spend the winter exposed to the inclemencies of the air. This peril causes his particular talent. He builds himself a roof whose imbricated and diverging stalks will allow cold dews and drops of melted snow to trickle away at a distance, when the case is fixed and hanging vertically. Under this covering, he weaves a thick silk lining, which will make a soft mattress and a rampart against the effects of the cold. Once these precautions are taken, the winter may come and the north wind rage: the Psyche is sleeping peacefully in his hut. But all this is not improvised as the stormy season approaches. It is a delicate work which takes time to carry out. All his life-long the caterpillar labours at it, improving it, adding to it, strengthening it incessantly. And, in order to acquire greater skill, he begins his apprenticeship at the moment when he leaves the egg. As preliminary practice for the thick overcoat of full-grown age, he tries his hand on cotton capes. Even so does the Pine Processionary, as soon as hatched, weave first delicate tents, then gauzy cupolas, as harbingers of the mighty wallet in which the community will make its home. Both alike are harassed from the day of their birth by the presentiment of the future; they start life by binding themselves apprentices to the trade that is to safeguard them one day. No, the Psyche is not more sensitive to cold than any other smooth-skinned caterpillar; he is a creature of foresight. Deprived in winter of the shelters granted to the others, he prepares himself, from his birth, for the building of a home that will be his salvation and practises for it by making fripperies of wadding suited to his strength. He foresees the rigours of winter during the blazing dog-days.