Butterflies Worth Knowing Part 27

The female b.u.t.terflies at least have something to do besides sipping the nectar of flowers or idly twirling their feelers. They must lay their eggs and thus provide for the continuation of the species; to do this they find suitable blades of gra.s.s on which they deposit their tiny, half-round, smooth yellow eggs. A week or so later each egg hatches into a dumpy little yellow caterpillar with a black head and a body well covered with hairy bristles. This little creature is a silk spinner and makes a home instinctively by drawing together more or less the outer edges of a leaf blade and fastening them with transverse bands of silk. It then feeds upon the green tissues and as it grows larger it makes its nest more secure by thicker walls of silken web.

When full grown as a caterpillar it changes into a slender chrysalis generally of a grayish red color, thickly dotted with black. About ten days later it emerges as a b.u.t.terfly.

The Least Skipper is one of the most widely distributed of all b.u.t.terflies. It occurs from New England to Texas, south to Florida on the east coast, and west to the Rocky Mountains.

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