""Some mothers, I am told, put their eggs in other places. The fly, for instance, likes to lay her eggs in the meat in the butchers" shops, so that the maggots that come from them may have, plenty of the food they like best. The beetle places her eggs in a dung-heap, where the grubs that come from them are sure to get plenty to eat.
""Well, it seems to me, whether we were caterpillars, maggots, or grubs, we did justice to the food our good mothers provided for us. I know I did little else but feed from morning till night, and as I fed and grew, my skin split in all directions, and I threw it off from time to time, always finding a new one underneath. I don"t think the gardener can have been very fond of us, for we must have done a good deal of damage to his plants.
""Well, after a while I suppose I must have reached my full size, for I had no longer any desire to eat. I seemed to want to sleep. I rolled myself up in a snug ball, gummed myself into the leaf, andcovered myself with a loosely-spun, flossy silk. I think people called me a pupa or a chrysalis in those days, but how long it lasted I never shall know.