THE BUTTERFLY JARS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 625, 30 March 1929, Page 25

THE BUTTERFLY JARS

In Big Boy’s shed is a barrel, with an old bread board for a cover. On the board are jars and jars and jars—preserve jars, filled, not with peaches and pears and strawberries, but with twigs and leaves; and at least two inches of dirt are on the bottom of some of the jars. Strange things are hanging on many of the twigs or cuddled under a bit of shingle. Chiefly white or yellowish or brown they are, of various shapes and sizes. You might imagine one was a big pussywillow tangled close in white, spider’s web; another a big brown leaf sewed together and varnished. A green leaf in one jar is nibbled, and at its edge is a tiny green caterpillar, eating its fill. In another jar of elm leaves, looking like a huge curled leaf itself, perhaps because he has devoured so many of them, is another caterpillar. There is also a fuzzy, tawny little rolled rug—caterpillars, smooth, caterpillars shaggy, anything Big Boy can find. Every day the caterpillars have to be fed, and that keeps him busy, they gobble their meals so fast. * Every time Big Boy finds a new kind of caterpillar, he has to discover what kind of food it likes best. If it does not like hemp, nettle or elm leaves, it is a problem. For days and days they eat, more than you would believe possible: then the first thing Big Boy knows, the caterpillar has gone, and presto change, a chrysalis or a cocoon, like the leaf of the pussy-willow or like a pendant, has taken its place; and Big Boy has one less caterpillar to feed. Sometimes the larvae, he calls them that instead of worms—-disappear. Big Boy does not worry about that, for there is no way for them to get out from the covered jars. Big Boy knows the little fellows are sleeping under the dirt, cuddled up in a rug. Almost every time Big Boy goes out of doors he turns over boards and stones, and looks under leaves, where lie may find a cocoon without the trouble of feeding the larvae, but somehow he loves the cocoons best that he lias had a share in making. That is what is in Big Boy’s jars in the autumn. The spring is another story—and a more wonderful, beautiful story. In the winter Big Boy seems to forget his pets, but when spring comes, he runs out to look at his jars every day. Sometimes in the jar the chrysalis still hangs to its branch, but it has burst. Sometimes the silky cocoon has a hole at the top or bottom, and, in the jar is something that could have been placed there only by magic or by some great power, for the cover is still on the jar—a glorious butter - liy or a beautiful moth. When Big Boy is most lucky, lie sees a slimy, ugly looking creature slide from the case and stretch its clawlike wings very slowly. Stretching, expanding, drying, a miracle has happened. Behold the lovely moth or butterfly' Fluttering, stretching, shining bright and new. Big Boy lets him out. Feeble at first, with short flights, and easy to catch, then gaining strength he flies away to join others of his kind, as Big Boy watches him on his way.