The adaptable caterpillar: Country diary 100 years ago

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 3 August 1917

A caterpillar sent to me for identification had been place in a cardboard box surrounded by corrugated paper, and marked, "Do not crush"; nevertheless, the post office had done its best, and when I unwrapped the paper no caterpillar was visible in the smashed box. I was puzzled by its absence until I noticed a hard lump on the corrugated paper; the lava, released from the box, had employed its leisure by spinning a cocoon in which to pupate. The normal cocoon of the puss moth, the species which had been sent, is placed on the trunk of a willow or poplar, and the caterpillar mixes with its sticky and quickly hardening silk particles of wood and bark, so that the finished abode looks exactly like its surroundings; the present cocoon looks like a swelling of the paper. Here was a case for the advocates of protective resemblance, correct enough in a way, yet simply caused unconsciously by the caterpillar making use of materials at hand; many similar phenomena can be explained in the same way.