In August we inspect the lower foliage of the tree: an easy examination, for it is carried on no higher than our heads. Towards the far end of the twigs it is easy to espy the Bombyx’ eggs, packed into cylinders that resemble scaly catkins. Their size and their whitish colour make them show up amid the sombre green. Gathered with the double pine-needle that bears them, these cylinders are crushed under foot, a summary fashion of stamping out an evil before it spreads.
This I have done in the case of the few pine-trees in my enclosure. And the same might be done in the wider forest expanses and more especially in parks and gardens, where symmetrical foliation is one of the [[127]]great beauties of the tree. I will add that it is wise to prune every bough that droops to earth and to keep the foot of the conifer bare to a height of six feet or so. In the absence of these lower stairs, the only ones that the Bombyx with her clumsy flight can reach, she will not be able to populate the tree. [[128]]
[1] .975 by .351 inch.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[2] Cf. The Hunting Wasps: chaps. xiv to xvii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
CHAPTER VI
THE PINE PROCESSIONARY: THE STINGING POWER
The Pine Processionary has three costumes: that of infancy, a scanty, ragged fleece, a mixture of black and white; that of middle age, the richest of the three, when the segments deck themselves on their dorsal surface with golden tufts and a mosaic of bare patches, scarlet in colour; and that of maturity, when the rings are cleft by slits which one by one open and close their thick lips, champing and grinding their bristling russet beards and chewing them into little pellets, which are thrown out on the creature’s sides when the bottom of the pocket swells up like a tumour.
When wearing this last costume, the caterpillar is very disagreeable to handle, or even to observe at close quarters. I happened, quite unexpectedly, to learn this more thoroughly than I wished.