Nettle-Leaf Tent-builders
VERY few of our readers will need an introduction to the nettle. It is, perhaps, the one plant which may claim the largest number of intimate acquaintances. It was Dr. Culpepper, the old-time herbalist, I believe, who claimed, moreover, that it was one of the easiest of plants to distinguish, in proof of which he affirmed that "it could be found even on the darkest night by simply feeling for it." Even those most ignorant of botany, after having once "scraped acquaintance," as it were, with the nettle, find it to their interest to keep its memory green.
It is partly because it is so well known, and partly because so few people use their eyes analytically, that a certain little mystery of the plant is so well guarded. For almost any bed of nettles may well tempt the young entomologist to tarry, while he forgets the tingling fingers as he fills his collecting-box with welcome specimens.
We are sure to have company if we linger long about our nettles. There is a small brood of butterflies which we can always count upon. Here is one of them coming over the meadow. It has a sharp eye for nettles, and is even now on the lookout for them. In a moment more its beautiful black, scarlet-bordered and white-spotted wings are seen fluttering among the leaves, alighting now here, now there, each brief visit leaving a visible witness if we care to look for it. It has now settled upon a leaf within easy reach. Creeping along its edge, it is soon hanging beneath, but only for a second, and is off again on the wing. Let us pluck the leaf. Upon looking beneath it we may see the pretty token of the Red Admiral, a tiny egg which we may well preserve for our microscope.
We shall not wait long before another butterfly visitor arrives, smaller than the last, and with its deep orange, black-spotted wings conspicuously jagged at the edges—one of the "angle-wings," which immediately announces his name as he alights with wings folded close above his back, disclosing the silver "comma" in the midst of the dull brown of the nether surface. Many are the tiny tokens which she also leaves behind her as she flutters away in search of a new nettle-clump.
We have been closely observing these two butterflies perhaps for half an hour, and during that time our eyes have rested a dozen times upon a condition of things here among the leaves which certainly should have immediately arrested our attention. Almost within touch of our hand, upon one stalk, are three leaves which certainly do not hang like their fellows. One of them has been drawn up at the edges, and fully one-half of its lower portion is gone, while its angle of drooping indicates more than the mere weight of the leaf. "A spider's nest, of course," you remark. As such it has been passed a thousand times even by young and enthusiastic entomological students who would have risked their lives for a "cecropia" or a "bull's-eye" caterpillar, or stung their hands mercilessly as they swept their butterfly net among those very stinging leaves. It is interesting to gather a few of these "spider's nests," and examine the cause of their heavy droop, which proves to be a healthy-looking gray caterpillar an inch or more in length, covered with formidable spines, perpetuating as it were the tendency of its fosterplant. Only yesterday he built himself this tent, having abandoned the remnant tent just below, for he eats himself out of house and home every couple of days. About five weeks ago he began his career, his first meal consisting, perhaps, of the iridescent shell of a tiny egg—precisely such a one as our first butterfly visitor has just left, for this is the caterpillar of the Atalanta or Red Admiral.
We may find a number of these tents if we look sharp, and even while gathering them may overlook a still more remarkable roof-tree of another caterpillar, which constructs its pavilion on quite a different plan. This, too, might even deceive a "spider," the edges of the leaves being drawn together beneath, and the veins partly severed near the stem, giving it quite a steep pitch. Upon looking beneath, we disclose another prickly tenant somewhat similar to the first, only that he is yellow and black instead of gray, while he is clothed with the same complementary growth of branching spines.