grow to six feet and over are more to be feared
than are other poisonous snakes. Of these, we have in our country,
besides the rattlesnakes, the water moccasin, or cotton mouth, the
copperhead, and the coral snake. The latter is a bright-colored snake
of red, yellow, and black rings found in the South, but it is usually
small, and not aggressive, so that but few cases of poisoning are
known. The other two are common enough, the former from Norfolk, Va.,
south, the other all over the eastern country from Texas to
Massachusetts. They are usually confounded, however, with two
perfectly harmless snakes, the cotton mouth with the common water
snake, the copperhead with the so-called spreading adder, but as
their differences have to be learned from actual inspection and are
very hard to express in a description which would help to identify
living specimens, it is wisest to keep away from all of them.

See "The Poisonous Snakes of North America." By Leonard Stejneger,
published by Government Printing office, Washington.

[Illustration: Water moccasin]

[Illustration: Chrysalis]

INSECTS AND BUTTERFLIES

_United States Bureau of Entomology_

(Illustrations are copies from Comstock's "How to Know the
Butterflies," through courtesy of D. Appleton & Company.)

There is an advantage in the study of insects over most other branches
of nature, excepting perhaps plants, in that there is plenty of
material. You may have to tramp miles to see a certain bird or wild
animal, but if you will sit down on the first patch of grass you are
sure to see something going on in the insect world.

Butterflies

Nearly all insects go through several different stages. The young bird
is very much like its parent, so is the young squirrel or a young
snake or a {102} young fish or a young snail; but with most of the
insects the young is very different from its parents. All butterflies
and moths lay eggs, and these hatch into caterpillars which when full
grown transform to what are called pupae or chrysalids--nearly
motionless objects with all of the parts soldered together under an
enveloping sheath. With some of the moths, the pupae are surrounded by
silk cocoons spun by the caterpillars just before finally transforming
to pupae. With all butterflies the chrysalids are naked, except with
one species which occurs in Central America in which there is a common
silk cocoon. With the moths, the larger part spin cocoons, but some of
them