PSYCHE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 47, 25 February 1911, Page 10

PSYCHE.

(By George Howes, F.E.S., and Edith Howes.) [For the Post.] Psyche crept up the manuka branch into the wide twilight. She was one of a company of tiny caterpillars recently hatched in a long tapering cocoon of tough brown silk ornamented with fragments of leaf and twig. In that soft bed, where the eggs had lain beside the shrivelled lifeless body of the mother moth, the little creatures had wakened to voracious life. Issuing one by one, they hurried to the leaves and tender shoots best suited to their tiny jaws. \ ' For threo nights Psyche ate unceasingly, walking on her strong thoracic legs, and carrying the tail end of her body lifted quaintly in the air. For three days she lay hid in bark crevices or joints of leaves, invisible to her enemies. So fast she grew, she must needs i cast her skin several times. ! She was pitifully small and defenceless. Looking at her, it appeared impassible that one so weaponless should preserve her life in a devouring world, a world where beetles and spiders lay in wait with cruel jaws, where quick-eyed birds probed every corner with their murderous beaks. But in her soft brown body was developing that marvellous secretion which was to form her silken J defence against her foes ; already she was using twisted threads of it as ropes whereby to drop from twig to twig. After three nights of feasting she began to make her hiding place. Sitting still, and drawing the fine gummy threads from her body through her mouth, she wove them with her jaws round her uplifted tail. That end was soon enveloped in a little sheath. For weeks she wove, in the intervals between her many meals, working slowly and with infinite care and skill. All this time she carried the increasing cocoon on the hooks of her uplifted tail, walking only on the front three pair of legs. As she pursued her laborious journeys from branch to twig, from twig to leaf, she was the quaintest little figure in all the moonlit bush. By-and-by the sheath grew too heavy to be up-lifted. She lowered it and let ib hang, and so walked dragging it behind her. She cut fragments of leaf and twig anfl interwove them with the silken covering. At first their greenness, on the brownness of the silk, had an odd appearance ; but in a few hours they dried to the same quiet hue. At "the head end of the cocoon she made a frilled silk opening. This she controlled by a strong inside cord. Cosily she lined her nest with creamy silk of the softest texture. Now she was safe. • Out of her weakness had come a means of protection more effective than any boasted by her enemies. At night she freely roamed and ate, her head and fore-tody clear of the cocoon, her hind-body hooked firmly into it. In a twinkling, at the approach of clanger, she retreated into the safety of her ingenious hiding-place, pulling the opening fast shut with her littlo cord. ' When day dawned she spun two strong threads, tied the cocoon to a branch, crept in and pulled the door-cord, and so rested snugly and safely till friendly night returned. No harm could come to her. Her little house was so toughly woven tliat neither bird nor insect could pierce it, so securely tied that no wind could loosen it, so interwoven with scraps of leaf and twig that no casual glance could distinguish it from the branch on which it hung. Only parasites might work her ill, and these 6he escaped. Her labour, and the nightly withdrawal of so mnrb substance from her body, had kept her thin. Now she could live at her ease and grow fat. Nothing was left to do but to add a little to her cocoon as she grew bigger and required more room. Throughout the autumn months she roamed and feasted at night, by day lay cosily in her swinging bed. With the last warm days she was overtaken by the languor of pupation. That great change came which was to end her life, of freedom. Appetite and energy alike forsook her. A night arrived oir which she did not issue forth as usual to take her part in the busy life of the bush. Many nights passed. Winter came; storming itself through weary months; still she lay hidden and unheeding. In her silken bed she had cast her caterpillar skin, thrusting it behind her. She lay head downwards, a few faint markings in her chrysalis skin showing rudimentary organs as of a future moth. Spring came with its warmth of sunlight filtering through the boughs. Psyche stirred and woke. Woke to a new existence, a strange quiet life in which she who had roamed so freely in her earlier days should now for evermore have neither power nor wish to move. The rudimentary organs had never developed, the markings were but the signs of ancient structure or intention, long since abandoned by her sex. Wingless, almost legless, an organism wholly specialised for maternity, she lay and waited. A rod away hung another silken cocoon. Here slept a male of her kind. Under the chrysalis skin his limbs could be plainly seen, growing to their full size and strength. With the warmth of spring he, too, stirred and woke, but woke to fullness of activity. Working his way down to the lower end of his cocoon, he forced open the doorway and thrust out his head. Wriggling and strugling, he at last split his chrysalis skin and emerged, a moth, full-limbed, full-winged. For a while he hung on the cocoon, drying himself. Slowly his wings dilated and their delicate scalings came into view, the long fore-wings a rich deep brown, the shorter hind wings a lighter shade. The feathers of his slender body dried to a soft fluffiness. Eager, palpitating, thrilled' with that double sex-energy possessed by the male wherever the female is helpless and hidden, he flew on strong swift wings to find his mate. She still lay waiting. No sound, no movement arose from her to guide him, but who knows what mysterious currents of attraction pulsated from her in her hiding place ? ( Straight as an arrow he flew to her. She sensed his coming, felt the shaking of her home as he tore at her closed door, yet could not spring to meet him. Like Psyche, whose name she bore, she :night not behold her lover with the eyes of day. In darkness he must find her, iii darkness leave her. In later days, a mass of tiny eggs lay beside her shrivelled body. Her cycle was complete, her life's work done.

THE CAUSE OF CONSTIPATION. The most common cause of constipation is a lack of exercise necessary to keep the muscles of the bowels active. That is why constipation is often brought on by too frequent us© of purgatives. They act violently, performing the work of the bowelsofor them, and so weaken them that they will not act without assistance. Chamberlain's Tablets will cure constipation because instead of doing the woz-k of the bowels they gently stimulate them to voluntary action. Their frequent use will not injure the most delicate person, — Advt.