Little Folk

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 23, 27 January 1923, Page 16

Little Folk

No. 30. AN UNKNOWN FRIEND (Ail Bights Reserved.) I (Written for "Tins Post" by Edr& 1 Howes..) It was night and the bads were asleep, their beakß tucked under thair wings. Out from their hiding-places came thousands of moths, fluttering, flying, soaring, pursuing, living their gay night life in the cool darkness along the river's banks. The banks stood high above the water's edge, and were covered with bushes and gardens and fields of flat.

The moon rose and a little snow-white j moth floated down its first broad shaft like a fairy yacht on a silver: stream. She alighted on a great leaf of flax, walked daintily down its side, then lifted her pretty wings high above her head, pointed her sloudor tail at the flax leaf and laid an egg. For a while she waited in that position; but no morel eggs were ready to be laid, no she Sew off into the summer night. The egg was tiny and louad?-and as. green *3tho leaf to which tt was gummed, oat after a couple of days ft began to turn red. Redder and redder it gt»w, for the caterpillar that was gromiog inside lit had a deep red stripe down its back, and it snowed through the thin egg-eiin. One evening the egg-ekin mi yieixeil and burst open, and the caterpillar oaxne oat. He was so small that fifteen lik» him, set in a row, would only have nMd» an inch. His head was big, hit red stripe waa redder than ever, his bwrj- -was yellow but quite transparent. As soon as be had eaten hia first meal, however, his body turned bright green, for his food was the bright green flax, and it showed through his transparent skin. He nibbled all night with his strong; fittlo iaws, eating the underside of the flax blade. When daylight came he want down the stem, looking for a hiding-place.. In the flax bnsh there were 'dead leaves that had dried and had curled jrrwnrds, making long narrow ttumeis. Into one of' these tunnels he crept, and there he rested safely till friendly night canie back. Then he crept up the. blade and nibbled again.

So he lived hia cautious caterpillar life, feeding by night, hiding by day. He ate so much that he soon outgrew his skin, and he had to split it down the back and < oast it off, coming oat into a new one,, soft and roomy. By the time he was a week old he no longer showed his food throughhis 6kin, for nis transparency was gone. He^ was now dull yellow, with a rich fed stripe down his baok. With the growth of his body his jaws grew bigger, and the cuts he made in the flax became longer and deeper and wider. Each day the farmer shook his head more anxiously as he looked at his crop. "My. flax is being reined," he complained, "and I don't know Bow to stogi it." For the moth-mother who laid the egg had laid nearly two hundred since, and thousands of mothers like -her had each laid as many, so the flax was swarming with nibbling caterpillars. They cut' into the leaves and spoiled them, yet the farmer never saw thehi, nor found out where they hid by day. He didn't think of looking in. the curled dead leaves. • But he had a friend, although he was a stranger to him, and he knew nothing: of her doings. Indeed he never notioed her, nor ever thanked her for her kindly help. When the caterpillar was newly hatched she had come flying swiftly to the flax bush, a small ichneumon wasp, slen-der-bodied, tight-woisted, four-winger, long-horned. She had hovered noiselessly above the flax blade. Searching with her keen eyes, then had darted in and pricked the baby caterpillar with the end of the' sharp sword she wore in her tail. That was all it seemed—a prick! But it was more. In that moment she 'had pierced his'skin and laid an egg in, the hole she had made. Nobody knew it but herself, and shs said nothing ;aboUt it, but flew off to find more, caterpillars and lay more eggs. The pricked baby went 6n eating and hiding and growing, and changing his colour and his skin as if nothing had happened to him. But after a wnile the egg hatched into a little grub, white and legless. Now the poor caterpillar began to be very uncomfortable, for the grub was eating him. He nibbled the green flai by night and rested by day, but the grub, safe in his. body, could suck day and night at the rich juices lying all around it. .Its mother had known well where' to place it, so that it might have fresß food" every day. It fed and fed, and grew fatter and fatter, but the poor caterpillar, no matter how much he ate, grew weaker every hour. He was only half-grown, but he would never reach his full size. Never would he know that rich time of drowsy, content that ■ heralds the coming of the Great Change, when food becomes unnecessary, and rest is happiness. Never would be burrow into the soil and make a little earthen cocoon for himself, in which to change from caterpillar to chrysalis, from chrysalis to snow-white moth. He was eaten, eaten out almost from head to tail. There came an evening when he crept oui hp more to feed. He lay still and dead in the tunnel of the dead leaf.

In his hollow body the grub was very comfortable. She Was abrfut to. change, so she first put out a little gum through the dead creature's .mouth to stick him firmly to tha leaf and keep him from rolling . about, then she lay still in this safe hiding-place and grew her wings and legs and horns and slender tight-waisted body. When she was ready to come out she cut a round hole in the caterpillar skin and popped her head through it, then she' pulled and struggled till she worked her way into the funnel. ,Up the tunnel she walked, and out into the fresh air. She dried her wing and flew dff, to pierce caterpillar babies with her sword and drop an egg into each hole she "made. Soon, there were thousands of empty caterpillar skins left hanging in the dead flax leaves, for. many another ichneumon wasp had found them out. The farmer's face lost its,anxious look. 'My flax will not be ruined after all," he said. "Those caterpillars .are disajinearing fast. I wonder what is killing them?"