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Caterpillar   /kˈætəpˌɪlər/  /kˈætərpˌɪlər/   Listen
Caterpillar

noun
1.
A wormlike and often brightly colored and hairy or spiny larva of a butterfly or moth.
2.
A large tracked vehicle that is propelled by two endless metal belts; frequently used for moving earth in construction and farm work.  Synonym: cat.



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"Caterpillar" Quotes from Famous Books



... assiduous in laying up money, which before I had squandered as fast as I obtained it, and had realised a considerable sum. I could not help comparing myself to a chrysalis previous to its transformation. I had before been a caterpillar, I was now all ready to burst my confinement, and flit about as a gaudy butterfly. Another week I continued my prudent conduct, at the end of which I was admitted to my superior, in whose hands I placed a sum of money which I could very conveniently spare, and received ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... footsteps Draw a magic circle round them, So that neither blight nor mildew, Neither burrowing worm nor insect, Shall pass o'er the magic circle; Not the dragon-fly, Kwo-ne-she, Nor the spider, Subbekashe, Nor the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena; Nor the mighty caterpillar, Way-muk-kwana, with the bear-skin, ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow

... Lovelace Peyton treats me with confidence. He comes to me now just as he goes to Roxanne for things he wants, strings or sympathy, and I keep a supply of both on hand for him. And when he brings dreadful bugs and things I never let my heart quake—that is, so he will notice it. A woolly caterpillar was the last test that I ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess

... organs remained alive and grew, and in some cases at least became connected with the genital ducts. Even in these cases the moth when developed showed the original characters of the sex to which belonged the caterpillar from which it came, although it was carrying a gonad of the opposite sex. It will be seen that these results are the direct opposite of those obtained by Steinach on Mammals. We have no evidence that the darker colour of the normal male in this case is adaptive, ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... somethin'. Miss Lily Deford and Mr. Billy Pugh married! Whom the Lord loveth He chaseth! He sure must be fond of Mrs. Deford! Well, all I've got to say is I hope they'll stay away until the thunder and lightning is over. A caterpillar has about as much chance to stand up straight as Miss Lily to meet her ma in argument. I tell you now I wouldn't like that longnet thing she puts to her eye to stare at me if I was alone with her." She took up her basket. "Is the eggs out? I don't know ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... said the butterfly; "I am engaged to be married to a spider; I have been engaged ever since I was a caterpillar." ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... with the phones, like this. Then, from the phones to the ground wire, the wire is carried thus through a secondary dry cell battery, on each side of which the wires are taken off to a rheostat, though my partner has sketched this to look more like a bird after a caterpillar. ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple

... sticks to that name, in speaking of the gentleman with the diamond,) Ma'am Allen tried to peek into it one day when she left it on the sideboard. "If you please," says she,—'n' took it from him, 'n' gave him a look that made him curl up like a caterpillar on a hot shovel. I only wished he hadn't, and had jest given her a little saas, for I've been takin' boxin'-lessons, 'n' I've got a new way of counterin' I want to try ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... men who cannot remember having, in their boyhood, taken a caterpillar and shut it up in a box. Before long the creature assumed a chrysalis form, and finally developed into a butterfly, with a completely new power not possessed by the caterpillar. Instead of only being able to grovel on the ground, the creature ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... man learned the secret, of the caterpillar's silken spinning. Talking of caterpillars, you may, or ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... however seems to link them together, as if this spawning were the origin of the life, the brief life, of the insect. He appears therefore to use 'reptile,' not in the defined sense which we commonly attach to the word, but in the general sense of 'a creeping creature,' such for instance as a grub or caterpillar, the first form of an insect, leading on to its final metamorphosis or development. Even so his natural history is curiously at fault: for no grub or caterpillar can spawn—which is the function of the fully-developed insect itself, ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... salutary violence. To us there remain only quiet duties, the constant care, the gradual improvement, the cautious and unhazardous labours of the industrious though contented gardener—to prune, to strengthen, to engraft, and one by one to remove from its leaves and fresh shoots the slug and the caterpillar.' Coleridge goes farther than George Eliot, when he adds the exhortation—'Far be it from us to undervalue with light and senseless detraction the conscientious hardihood of our predecessors, or even to condemn in them that vehemence to which the blessings it won for us leave ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley

... the transformations which had taken place in the life of that caterpillar. Their mother told them that the butterfly was sometimes considered a type of immortality. In this world we are, like the worm, in an inferior state of existence. Our bodies are laid in the grave, but we are not dead, any more than the unmoving ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various

... clear, and a pale green. It is all in one piece, only a little slit in the top. I wonder what came out of it. Close by it there is another green box, long and narrow, but not empty, and no slit in the top. I wonder what is in it. Near it is a smooth, green caterpillar, crawling on the edge of a bit of cabbage-leaf. I'm afraid that bright light has hurt my eyes. It was just outside of my prison wall, and bright as the sun. The first thing I remember, even before my wings had ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... though his body may be in chains! But we are not all either natural or transcendental philosophers; our appetite requires not one leaf, but many, for our powers of assimilation are not great enough to draw spiritual sustenance from one alone; and so, like the caterpillar, when we have finished our leaf, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... countryside lying, as it seemed, under snow, with square patches of dimness, white phantoms of roads, rents and pools of velvety blackness, and lamp-jewelled houses. I remember a train boring its way like a hastening caterpillar of fire across the landscape, and how distinctly I heard its clatter. Every town and street was buttoned with street lamps. I came quite close to the South Downs near Lewes, and all the lights were out in the houses, and the ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... something tangible to cling to— for instance,"—and he pressed the tips of his fingers delicately together, "there are grades of intelligence just as there are grades of creation; you cannot instruct a caterpillar as you instruct a man. Now there are many human beings who are of the caterpillar quality of brain—what are you to do with them? They would not understand God as manifested in the solar system, but they would try to please some favourite Saint by good conduct. Is it not better that ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... inhaled it with relish, meticulously, that not one grain was lost upon his white caterpillar moustache, and said indifferently: ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... scandal if he might, And saw the Queen who sat betwixt her best Enid, and lissome Vivien, of her court The wiliest and the worst; and more than this He saw not, for Sir Lancelot passing by Spied where he couched, and as the gardener's hand Picks from the colewort a green caterpillar, So from the high wall and the flowering grove Of grasses Lancelot plucked him by the heel, And cast him as a worm upon the way; But when he knew the Prince though marred with dust, He, reverencing king's blood in a bad man, Made such excuses as he might, and these Full knightly without ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... action to be found in the behavior of certain of the lower animals. Bergson cites the case of a species of wasp which with a skill, unconscious though it be, resembling that of the expert surgeon, paralyzes a caterpillar without killing it, and carries it home for food for its young.[2] There are again many cases of "insects which invariably lay their eggs in the only places where the grubs, when hatched, will find ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... hobbledehoy, hopeful, cadet, minor, master. scion; sap, seedling; tendril, olive branch, nestling, chicken, larva, chrysalis, tadpole, whelp, cub, pullet, fry, callow; codlin ,codling; foetus, calf, colt, pup, foal, kitten; lamb, lambkin[obs3]; aurelia[obs3], caterpillar, cocoon, nymph, nympha[obs3], orphan, pupa, staddle[obs3]. girl; lass, lassie; wench, miss, damsel, demoiselle; maid, maiden; virgin; hoyden. Adj. infantine[obs3], infantile; puerile; boyish, girlish, childish, babyish, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... imprisoning the Sheikhs of the villages till they have paid the uttermost farthing. With protection and fair government, the peasantry of Northern Syria would be among the happiest in the world. But in their land, what the Turkish caterpillar leaves the ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... cannot; but we know not that it will be so;—and I do know that to regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of heaven, is as if the grovelling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flutter through the air, roving at will from flower to flower, sipping sweet honey from their cups, or basking in their sunny petals. If these little creatures knew how great ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... we can look to the Cabinet to prevent it." "This world will soon be a dull place. I wish we could leave it for a change," said Ayrault. "I don't mean forever, of course, but just as people have grown tired of remaining like plants in the places in which they grew. Alan has been a caterpillar for untold ages; can he not become the butterfly?" "Since we have found out how to straighten the axis," said Deepwaters, "might we not go one better, and improve the orbit as well?—increase the difference between ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... stings, or bruises; every second of your existence you are wounded by some piece of animal life that nobody has over seen before, except Swammerdam and Meriam. An insect with eleven legs is swimming in your teacup, a nondescript with nine wings is struggling in the small beer, or a caterpillar with several dozen eyes in his belly is hastening over the bread and butter! All nature is alive, and seems to be gathering all her entomological hosts to eat you up, as you are standing, out of your coat, waistcoat, and breeches. Such are the tropics. All this reconciles us to our dews, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... have a soft fleshy horn on their tails, erroneously believed to be a sting. If a farmer is so lucky as to procure one of these rare larvae, he is to bore a hole in an ash tree, and plug up the unlucky caterpillar alive in it. The leaves of that ash tree will, from thenceforth, be a specific ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various

... destructive to grapes with tender skins and such as grow in compact bunches. Its work is detected usually in compact grape clusters where a number of berries are injured by a "worm." The "worm" is a dark-colored caterpillar, the larva of the grape-berry moth (Polychrosis viteana.) There are two broods of this caterpillar, the first of which feeds on the stems and external portions of the young berries, while the second attacks the berries. The loss to the fruit-grower is of two kinds, ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... suffer me, in my current fashion, to glance at a few other considerations affecting this topic. It will be admitted, I suppose, that the lower animals possess, in their degree, similar cerebral or at least nervous mechanism with ourselves; in their degree, I say; for a zooephyte and a caterpillar have brains, though not in the head; and to this day Waterton does not know whether he shot a man or a monkey, so closely is his nondescript linked with either hand to the grovelling Australian and the erect orang outang. Brutes ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... let them believe me: for the love of our Lord, let them give heed to the little ant, who speaks because it is His pleasure. If they take not this caterpillar away, though it does not hurt the whole tree, because some virtues remain, the worm will eat into every one of them. Not only is the tree not beautiful, but it also never thrives, neither does it suffer the others near it to thrive; for the ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... without seeing me; and seats him at the foot of my filbert; then, out with his tablets, and, in a posture I s'd have called studdied, had he known anie one within sighte, falls a poetizing, I question not. Having noe mind to be interrupted, I lett him be, thinking he w'd soon exhauste y'e vein; but a caterpillar dropping from y'e leaves on to my page, I was fayn for mirthe sake, to shake it down on his tablets. As ill luck w'd have it, however, y'e little reptile onlie fell among his curls; which soe took me at vantage, that I could not helpe hastilie crying, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... home?" asked a child one day; "they are so pretty." Clearly, the "talk" was going to lessen, not to deepen the beauty. And animals? The child plays with cat and dog, he feeds the chickens, the horse and the donkey, he watches with the utmost interest caterpillar, snail and spider, but he does not want to be asked questions about them—he does want to talk and perhaps to ask the questions himself—nor does he always want even to draw, paint or model them. Mostly he wants to watch, and perhaps just to stir them up a little if they do not ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... as we have briefly sketched lays an egg on the leaf of some suitable food-plant, and there is hatched from it the well-known crawling larva[1] (fig. 1 b, c, d) called a caterpillar, offering in many superficial features a marked contrast to its parent. Except on the head, whose surface is hard and firm, the caterpillar's cuticle is as a rule thin and flexible, though it may carry a protective armature of closely set hairs, ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter

... think it a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them; nay, more, if your look had the power, not only to cheer but to guard them:—if you could bid the black blight turn away and the knotted caterpillar spare—if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, and say to the south wind, in frost—"Come, thou south, and breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it may flow out." This you would think a great thing? And do you think it not a greater thing, that all this (and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... itself, is an evil, and a terrible evil. But I think rather of death as the first pulse of the new strength, shaking itself free from the old mouldy remnants of earth-garments, that it may begin in freedom the new life that grows out of the old. The caterpillar dies into the butterfly. Who knows but disease may be the coming, the keener life, breaking into this, and beginning to destroy like fire the inferior modes or garments of the present? And then disease would be but the sign of the salvation of fire; of the agony of the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... whether we had seen the new armored caterpillar cars which they were preparing, and we told him we had seen them at St. Charmond. He said they were to be equipped with one "75" gun and with two or three mitrailleuses (the rapid fire gun), and that an equipment like this, armored ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

... redemption from under the law (Rom. 6:14), means to be placed in a higher, more sacred relationship to God. Even in nature God has two grades of existence, a lower and a higher, for some insects, even; the mosquito, first in the water; then by a simple process it rises into the higher kingdom; the caterpillar, a creeping worm, then the butterfly. But were there no analogies in nature, God has clearly revealed a higher relation for those who are redeemed from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13), "God sent ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin

... Butterfly may be collected upon the milkweed and brought in, so that the whole life history or metamorphosis of this beautiful insect, from the egg through the larva or caterpillar stage and the pupa or chrysalis stage to the adult butterfly, may be watched. The larvae or caterpillar must be supplied daily with fresh milkweed leaves. Other butterflies and moths and many other insects may be reared in the same way by supplying the larvae with suitable food. If we should ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... yards in front of him, crawling along the floor, was a man's hand. Eustace stared at it in utter astonishment. It was moving quickly, in the manner of a geometer caterpillar, the five fingers humped up one moment, flattened out the next; the thumb appeared to give a crab-like motion to the whole. While he was looking, too surprised to stir, the hand disappeared round ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... commerce begins with an egg no bigger than a mustard seed, out of which comes a diminutive caterpillar, which is kept in a frame and fed upon mulberry leaves. When the caterpillars are full grown, they climb upon twigs placed for them and begin to spin or make the cocoon. The silk comes from two little orifices in the head in the form of a glutinous gum which hardens into a fine elastic fiber. ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson

... something higher and brighter through that instant's approach and confidence. If I were to write down his thought as he walked, it would be with phrase and distinction peculiar to himself and to the boy-mind,—"It's the real thing with her; it don't make a fellow squirm like a pin put out at a caterpillar. She's good; ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... intelligence and utility. Another profoundly important fact in evolution is the continuity of life from body to body. The butterfly is frequently used as an illustration, but the principle holds with all the higher order of insects like ants, flies and bees. In the metamorphosis of the caterpillar we have a phenomenon so common that most people have personally observed it. Watch, in imagination, its transformation that contradicts materialistic philosophy. The worm is a physical body occupied by an evolving life or intelligence. Its ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers

... the tail and flukes of a shark. To conceal these monstrous appendages he wore over his shoulders a kihei of kapa and allowed himself to be seen only while in the sitting posture. He sometimes took the form of a worm, a moth, a caterpillar, or a butterfly to escape the hands of his enemies. On land he generally appeared as a man squatting, after the manner of a Hawaiian gardener while weeding ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... different trades and industries will be changed, the medical profession will be carried on under different conditions, engineering, science, the theatrical trade, the clerical trade, schools, hotels, almost every trade, will have to undergo as complete an internal change as a caterpillar does when it becomes a moth ... a change as profound as the abolition of private property in slaves would have been in ancient Rome or Athens." (The ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... into her sleigh which is made of a dove-feather, curling up in front, and which is drawn by twelve lady birds: the lady birds all had on robes of caterpillar fuz to keep them warm. The retinue of eleven Faeries were all riding on milk-white steeds of dandelion-down. The Queen held the reins herself, and cracking the whip which is made of a musquito leg, away they went over the moon-beam. The Queen saw me just as they left the palace, and gave me ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder

... of the grey rocky shore of that island, shaggy with variegated bushes and shrubs, and spotted and striped with purplish brown heath, indistinguishably blending with its image reflected in the still water, produced a curious resemblance, both in form and colour, to a richly-coated caterpillar, as it might appear through a magnifying glass of extraordinary power. The mists gathered as we went along: but, when we reached the top of Kirkstone, we were glad we had not been discouraged by the apprehension of bad ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... unclean, You dragged a slow and noisome train; And from your spider-bowels drew Foul film, and spun the dirty clew. I own my humble life, good friend; Snail was I born, and snail shall end. 40 And what's a butterfly? At best, He's but a caterpillar, dress'd; And all thy race (a numerous seed) Shall prove of ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... a poor caterpillar before; I liked you a little because I knew what a pretty butterfly you would be in time. I helped to make ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... wings, fly does not." "Fly flies straighter." "Butterfly is outdoors and a fly is in the house." "Flies are more dangerous to our health." "Flies haven't anything to sip honey with." "Butterfly doesn't live as long as a fly." "Butterfly comes from a caterpillar." ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... only then To honour not her selfe, but worthy men. These vertues now are banisht out of towne, Our Civill Wars have lost the civicke crowne. He highest builds, who with most art destroys, And against others fame his owne employs. I see the envious caterpillar sit On the faire blossome of each growing wit. The ayre's already tainted with the swarms Of insects, which against you rise in arms. Word-peckers, paper-rats, book-scorpions, Of wit corrupted the unfashion'd sons. The barbed censurers begin to looke Like the grim Consistory on thy booke; ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... not disappeared, their homes being different, are the Ammophilae, whom I see fluttering, one in spring, the others in autumn, along the garden-walks and over the lawns, in search of a caterpillar; the Pompili (The Pompilus is a species of Hunting-wasp known also as the Ringed Calicurgus—Translator's Note.), who travel alertly, beating their wings and rummaging in every corner in quest of a Spider. The largest of them waylays the Narbonne Lycosa (Known also as the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... All these things he averred he had himself seen, and if people asked him how they were possible, he answered simply, "I can no more explain these phenomena than I can explain the law of gravitation, or the transformation of a caterpillar into a moth. The first principles of everything are inexplicable. The difference in our surroundings is only that some things are frequently ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... Natural History (Vol. iii., p. 166.).—There is a parallel to the curious fact contributed by your Brazilian correspondent in the "vegetable caterpillar" of New Zealand. This natural rarity is described in Angas's Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various

... Thusa has been telling her some of her awful ghost stories," said Louis, laughing over the wreck of his slate. "I know what sent the yellow caterpillar crawling down stairs." ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... the egg, it becomes a large worm or caterpillar of a yellowish white color, (which is its first state;) this caterpillar feeds on the leaves of the mulberry tree, till, arriving at maturity, it winds itself up in a silken bag or case, called a cocoon, about the size and shape of a pigeon's ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... because these objects had twirled in the light wind while the crystals were forming. Singular disguises were produced: a bit of ragged rope appeared a piece of twisted lace-work; a knot-hole in a board was adorned with a deep antechamber of snowy wreaths; and the frozen body of a hairy caterpillar became its own well-plumed hearse. The most peculiar circumstance was the fact that single flakes never showed any regular crystallization: the magic was in the combination; the under sides of rails and boards exhibited it as unequivocally as the upper ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... thing to be at the time of life, and in the possession of the outward advantages, which compel other persons to stop in the midst of their own interesting affairs and begin to inquire if they understand one's character. As Kesiah lifted a caterpillar on a leaf, and carefully laid it in the centre of the grassy walk, she thought quite cheerfully that nobody had ever wondered about her character, and that it must be rather nice to ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... small wooden arrow-heads, and carefully protected by a piece of maize-leaf tied round it. It caused numbness of the tongue when the smallest particle was tasted. The Bushmen of the northern part of the Kalahari were seen applying the entrails of a small caterpillar which they termed 'Nga to their arrows. This venom was declared to be so powerful in producing delirium, that a man in dying returned in imagination to a state of infancy, and would call for his mother's breast. Lions when shot with it are said to perish in ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... weary caterpillar Hath nestled beneath the weeds; All wet with dew now slumbers The dragon-fly ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... let him live! That toleration which spares the caterpillar shall be extended to him! Men shall look on him in wonder, and, shrugging their shoulders, admire the wise dispensation of Providence, which can feed its creatures with husks and scourings; which spreads ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... not appear to have paid much attention to the natural history of the "Worm." Kirby, speaking of it, says, "the larvae of Crambus pinguinalis spins a robe which it covers with its own excrement, and does no little injury." Again, "I have often observed the caterpillar of a little moth that takes its station in damp old books, and there commits great ravages, and many a black-letter rarity, which in these days of bibliomania would have been valued at its weight in gold, has been snatched by these ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades

... shadows, colors, clouds Grass-buds, and caterpillar shrouds Boughs on which the wild bees settle, Tints that spot the violet's ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott

... help it. Oh, listen, Phoebe!' cried Bertha, with her wicked look of triumph. 'I brought home such a lovely sting-nettle for Miss Fennimore's peacock caterpillar; and when I heard how kind dear Juliana was to you about your visit to London, I thought she really must have it for a reward; so I ran away, and slily tucked it into her bouquet; and I did so hope she would take ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... basket-work, introduce a variety of patterns in black, red, and white. The majority of these are simple geometrical designs which arise naturally out of the nature of the material; of more elaborate designs specially common are the hook-pattern (Fig. 58), the pigeon's eye (Fig. 59), and the caterpillar (Fig. 60). ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... a little sigh, arranging the fruit in his slow absent way. Something at the side of the stall caught his eye, a little movement along the board, in and out through the colour and leaves. He lifted a leaf to see. It was a green and black caterpillar, crawling with stately hunch to the back of the stall. Achilles watched him with gentle eyes. Then he leaned over the stall and reached out a long finger. The caterpillar, poised in midair, remained swaying back and ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee

... that shook the foilage of the speckled geranium near by, and killed an artificial caterpillar that hung ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... from us at first, but when they found that we did them no harm, became friendly and brought us offerings of milk, also of a kind of slug or caterpillar which they seemed to eat. Hans, who was a great master of different native dialects, discovered a tongue, or a mixture of tongues, in which he could make himself understood to some ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... down to them whatever is most necessary to our arguments. For that matter, I had plenty of fairly good reasons for suspecting them of containing the sense of direction. When the Hairy Ammophila (A Sand-wasp who hunts the Grey Worm, or Caterpillar of the Turnip-moth, to serve as food for her grubs. For other varieties of the Ammophila, cf. "Insect Life": chapter 15.—Translator's Note.) is searching for the Grey Worm, it is with her antennae, those tiny fingers continually ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... SEED-PEARLS into the feeding-trough, to break the teeth of them that are there at meat. He had but lifted a corner to give them a glimpse of the Life eternal, and the girls thought him ridiculous! The human caterpillar that has not yet even begun to sicken with the growth of her psyche-wings, is among the poorest of the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... of wheat are greater than have ever been known, and are now nearly secured. A caterpillar gave for a while great alarm, but did little injury. Of tobacco, not half a crop has been planted for want of rain; and even this half, with cotton and Indian corn, has yet many chances ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... can see such a pretty thing up this tree," said Arabella. "A sort of a—caterpillar, of the most loveliest green and yellow you ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... the foundry, drawn by big caterpillar tractors, were all proceeding in one direction—toward the Somme. Villages along their route were filling with troops. The nearer the front you went, the greater the concentration of men and material. Shells, the size of the milk cans at suburban stations, stood in close order on ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... hard, brown hands, as he sat down at the table. "I don't know why it is, but the present generation has a marvelous way of skimming around any kind of work with their hands. They'll work their brains till they haven't got any more backbone than a caterpillar, but as for manual labor, it's old-timey and out of fashion. I wonder how these farms would ever have been carved out of the backwoods, if the old Puritans had sat down on the rocks with their noses in a lot of books, and tried to figure ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... trees should be treated in the same manner. Another method of fighting this insect is to spread a sheet under the tree, and with a blow jar off the little Turk and secure him on the sheet. But I consider the lime procedure the less trouble and more effective. The tent caterpillar, which is easily seen, should be destroyed at once. We have yet another insect to contend with which infests the apple and pear, commonly called the Coddling Moth, and the larva, the apple-worm (Garpocapsa pomonella). ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... to us what I took to be a seed-pod of some aerial plant, hanging straight down from a bough, at about six feet from the ground. On going up to it, I found to my surprise that it was a cocoon about the size of a sparrow's egg, woven by a caterpillar in broad meshes of a rose-coloured silky substance. It hung, suspended from the tip of an outstanding leaf, by a strong silken thread about six inches in length. On examining it carefully, I found that the glossy threads which surrounded it were thick and strong. Both above ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... think the girls ought to be in it, because there might be danger, but Oswald reminded him that they had promised Alice, and that a promise is a sacred thing, even when you'd much rather not. So Oswald got Alice alone under pretence of showing her a caterpillar—Dora does not like them, and she screamed and ran away when Oswald offered to show it her. Then Oswald explained, and Alice agreed to come and watch if she could. This made us later than we ought to have been, because Alice had to wait till ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... more ineffectively in his will and imagination to image God. In the reverent study of insect and animal life we gain some hint of what we have been and what we may become—something corresponding to the grub, a burrowing thing; to the caterpillar, a crawling thing; and finally to the butterfly, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... A green caterpillar was crawling on his sleeve. In his vague manner he picked it tenderly off and laid it on the leaf of an aloe that grew in the terrace vase ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... names and insignia famous in the world's wars for two hundred years, and with them battalions who a few brief months ago were peaceful citizens, knowing nothing of war. There were transport columns, ammunition columns, artillery columns, with mounted escorts. There were big guns, on huge caterpillar trucks, shouldering the lighter traffic to the ditches, and little guns slipping meekly in their rear. There were motor lorries, honking and thundering their insistent way through dodging, escaping, cursing infantry, forty-six miles of them to a single ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... time he was settin' on a stone in the lower pastur', cryin' again, and he heerd another cur'us little voice. 'T wa'n't like the posy's voice, but 'twas a little, wooly, soft, fuzzy voice, and he see 't was a caterpillar a-talkin' to him. And the caterpillar says, in his fuzzy little voice, he says, "What you cryin' for, Reuben?" And the boy, he says, "I'm powerful scaret o' dyin', that's why," he says. And that fuzzy caterpillar he laughed. "Dyin'!" he says. "I'm lottin' on dyin' ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson

... all seen the flaunting, unsightly abodes of the tent caterpillar and the foliage-denuded branches about them. Fortunately these are not stealthy enemies, and the owner can scarcely see his acre at all without being aware of their presence. He has only to look very early in the morning or late in the evening to find them ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... spreads the dismal shade Of Mystery over his head, And the caterpillar and fly Feed ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake

... amuse. We have lots of her toys, and very pretty ones too. At last some one taught her to make caterpillars in wool-work. A bit of work was to be done in a certain stitch and then cut with scissors, which made it look like a hairy caterpillar. The child took to this, and cared for nothing else. Wool of every shade was procured for her, and she made caterpillars of all colours. Her only complaint was that they did not turn into butterflies. However, she was a sweet, gentle-tempered child, and ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... not really as wide as Gregory's island was to its gentle hermit. No butterfly raptures for him; he devoured the one kind of facts he cared for, as a caterpillar devours leaves. ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable

... most wonderful case of all is the large caterpillar mentioned by Mr. Bates, which startled him by its close resemblance to a small snake. The first three segments behind the head were dilatable at the will of the insect, and had on each side a large black pupillated spot, which resembled the eye of the reptile. Moreover, it resembled ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... conspicuous colours of the male" (loc. cit., page 155).) I always distrust myself when I differ from him; but I cannot admit that birds learn to make their nests from having seen them whilst young. I must think it as true an instinct as that which leads a caterpillar to suspend its cocoon in a particular manner. Have you had any experience of birds hatched under a foster-mother making their nests in the proper manner? I cannot thank you enough for ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... upon him. The slim man squirmed like an eel, and even when on the ground drew a knife and stuck it into the calf of Rob's leg. A yell, and a stamp followed, and then a great silence in which we looked at one another awe-stricken. Mr. Wringham Poole lay like a crushed caterpillar, inert and twitching. It seemed as if Rob had killed him; but my grandfather, with proper care and precautions drew away the knife, and after having passed a hand over the body in search of further concealed weapons, laid him out ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... ever budding one, Thou formest each for life's enjoyments, And, like a mother, all thy children dear, Blessest with that sweet heritage,—a home The swallow builds the cornice round, Unconscious of the beauties She plasters up. The caterpillar spins around the bough, To make her brood a winter house; And thou dost patch, between antiquity's Most glorious relics, For thy mean use, Oh man, a humble cot,— Enjoyest e'en mid tombs!— ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... although Maria Sharp asserted that she for one was not willing to be called a caterpillar simply because there were too many women ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... excellent crops if it were not that a caterpillar devours the young plants, so that its culture has almost ceased. Only 10,000 pounds were exported in 1872. The orange thrives in so few localities on the Islands that it is not an article of commerce: only two boxes were exported last year, though San Francisco brings this fruit from Otaheite ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... selfish and you're not fusty; but you remind me of him when you make remarks like your first." She brushed a caterpillar from her light summer skirt, and noticing the draggled edge held it up. "There's one answer to your question about taking an active interest in clubs. There are twenty ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... player reaches back with his two hands and grasps the ankles of the player next behind him. At the signal to go, the entire column moves forward, endeavoring to keep from breaking the column by any one losing his grip on the ankles of the next member of the team, behind. The caterpillar creeps forward across the distance line and returns. When the rear end of the column crosses the base line, the race is completed, provided the column ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper

... dreamt of such a democracy "mewing its mighty youth" as the world had never seen. He had thought that his brains were to do their share in building up this great national imago, winged, divine, out of the clumsy, crawling, snobbish, comfort-loving caterpillar of Victorian England. With such dreams his life had started, and the light of them, perhaps, had helped him to his rapid success. And then his wife had died, and he had married again and become somehow more interested in his income, ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... Animal Life. There is a large class of insects, called Ichneumonidae, which lay their eggs in the bodies of caterpillars, and, as in the case of a moth laying its egg on the special food plant upon which its caterpillar can feed, so does each species of these insects unerringly lay its eggs in the body of a particular kind of caterpillar. It must be a wonderful sense which can enable an Ichneumon Fly to do this; it has never seen that ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... eggs to the hairs of the foreleg between the knee and the shoulder, a place the horse is almost certain to lick with his tongue and, in this manner, convey the eggs to his stomach, where they are hatched out. The breeding place of certain of the ichneumons is the body of a caterpillar. The ichneumon may be seen busily searching the bushes for her victim. When she finds it, she inserts her ovipositor into its body and lays her egg. If some other ichneumon has preceded her, she recognizes the fact at once, and will not deposit her egg, but will go in search of another ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... and out of date when confronted with the facts of every-day existence—facts which plainly taught us that man's chief business here below was simply to live, breed, and die—the life of a silk-worm or caterpillar on a slightly higher ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... a member of the great, the imperishable, the immortal army of American volunteers. These gallant spirits now lie in untimely sepulcher. No more will they respond to the fierce blast of the bugle or the call to arms. But let us believe that they are not dead, but sleeping! Look at the patient caterpillar as he crawls on the ground, liable to be crushed by every careless foot that passes. He heeds no menace, and turns from no dangers. Regardless of circumstances, he treads his daily round, avoided by the little child sporting upon the sward. ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... harpies, friendly salutations to bitter imprecations, mutual feastings to plotting villainies, minings and counterminings; good words to satires and invectives, we revile e contra, nought but his imperfections are in our eyes, he is a base knave, a devil, a monster, a caterpillar, a viper, a hog-rubber, &c. Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne;[4518] the scene is altered on a sudden, love is turned to hate, mirth to melancholy: so furiously are we most part bent, our affections fixed upon this object of commodity, and upon ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... to sea is explained. The stomach contained nothing but the sea-weed. Mr. Baynoe, however, found a piece of crab in one; but this might have got in accidentally, in the same manner as I have seen a caterpillar, in the midst of some lichen, in the paunch of a tortoise. The intestines were large, as in other herbivorous animals. The nature of this lizard's food, as well as the structure of its tail and feet, and the fact of its having been seen voluntarily swimming out at ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... rajah, who, sleeping soundly on his cot below, breathed heavily. After starting a strip with his teeth, Neranya, by the same means, would attach it to the railing of his cage and then wriggle away, much after the manner of a caterpillar's crawling, and this would cause the strip to be torn out the full length of his garment. He repeated this operation with incredible patience and skill until his entire garment had been torn into strips. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... measles in everything the children did or didn't do; or that well-known habit of hers, that even the children laughed about with her, of feeling things crawling all over her for hours after she had seen a caterpillar. Well, that was only the other side of her extraordinary sensitiveness, that made her know how everybody was feeling, and what to do to make him feel better. She had often said that she would certainly die if she ever tried to study medicine, because ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... of themselves, and be frightened at anybody else getting a chance. If I'm offal, let a wise man come and tell me, for I've never heard it yet. And in point of business, I'm not a class of goods to be in danger. If anybody takes to rolling me, I can pack myself up like a caterpillar, and find my feet when I'm let alone. And though, as I may say, you're taking some of our good works from us, which is property bearing interest, I'm not saying but we can afford that, though my ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... of Kent," went he forth, "was he that, if he thought he had hurt the feelings of a caterpillar, should have risen from his warm bed the sharpest night in winter to go and pray his pardon of his bare knees. God assoil him, loving and gentle soul! He was all unfit for this rough world. And the dust that Sir Roger cast ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... "Here dey is, Caterpillar! I knows how yer foots mus' be as much out of breaf wid yer tight gaiters as your waist is long ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... not explain that silk [61] is originally spun from the bowels of a caterpillar, and that it composes the golden tomb, from whence a worm emerges in the form of a butterfly. Till the reign of Justinian, the silk-worm who feed on the leaves of the white mulberry-tree were confined to China; those of the pine, the oak, and the ash, were common in the forests ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... Both are distinguished from the hair seals by one obvious characteristic: their method of propulsion on land is by a "lolloping" motion, in which the front and hind flippers are used alternately. The hair seals move by a caterpillar-like shuffle, making little or no use of their flippers; and so, the terminal parts of their flippers are not bent outwards as they are in the fur seals ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... how it feels. Most men go into this without knowing of the change that hangs over them. But I am older. It would not be nice for a caterpillar if he knew he was going to rip up all along his back in a minute or so. Yet I could sympathise with such a caterpillar now. Anyhow, George, I hope the change will be complete. I would not like to undergo only a partial metamorphosis, and become a queer speckled monster all ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... distilling apparatus, made of silver. He did not see the lady's face, and she, too, did not appear to see him. But when he noticed that her dress was green and yellow, he knew at once that she was a sorceress, for the caterpillar of the hawk-moth is green and yellow, and it, too, knows how to bewitch the eye. The lower end of its body looks as if it were its head and has a horn like a unicorn, so that it frightens away its enemies with its mock face, while it feeds in peace with ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... passed his expectations—a green and white gown, with long, tight sleeves, a green silk handkerchief round her neck and crossed in front, a green parasol, and green gloves. It was strange enough to see this verdant caterpillar turn out of a road-waggon, and gracefully shake herself free from the bits of straw and fluff which would usually gather on the raiment of the grandest travellers ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... and just about to pass out of his caterpillar state as a doctor's apprentice-lad into the chrysalis condition of a medical student in London. "But," with sudden reflection, "I hope she won't be in my way. Don't let her meddle with any ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... lawful for travelers to shoot game anywhere along the roadside for their own consumption; a farmer would no more think of objecting to a stranger shooting a buck on his veld than a gardener would object to one destroying a caterpillar. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... hands, old gloves and all, exclaiming, with girlish delight, "How nice it will seem to have a plenty of new, neat dresses all at once, and be like other girls! Miss Bat always talks about economy, and has no more taste than a—caterpillar." Molly meant to say "cat," but remembering her pets, spared ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... gift, drawn up no doubt by the Brahmans themselves, the most terrible penalties were invoked on any one who should interfere with the grant. One of these was that such an impious person would be a caterpillar in hell for sixty thousand years. [421] Plots of land and mango groves are also frequently given to Brahmans by village proprietors. A Brahman is forbidden to touch the plough with his own hands, but ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... laughter had subsided, "we must ask what is meant by 'protecting his own existence.' Frankly, we've been driven frantic by that one. The little humanoid, caterpillar-track mechanism that we all tend to think of as Snookums isn't really Snookums, any more than a human being is a hand or an eye. Snookums wouldn't actually be threatening his own existence unless his brain—now in the hold of ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... phenomena, "As readily can you mingle fire and frost as spirit and matter. . . . The belief that material bodies return to dust, hereafter to rise up as spiritual bodies with material sensations and desires, is incorrect. . . . The caterpillar, transformed into a beautiful insect, is no longer a worm, nor does the insect return to fraternise with or control the worm. . . . There is no bridge across the gulf which divides two such opposite conditions as the spiritual, or incorporeal, and ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... people there are, even in the middle class, who fail to recognise the fact that the egg (ovum) produces the caterpillar or "grub" (larva), which, after a due season of preparation, produces the chrysalis (pupa), which latter, lying quiescent for a variable period, either in the ground or in other situations favourable for its development, changes the last time to the perfect insect (imago). This latter, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... end of me," he thought in his little round head as he tried to wriggle across the road and couldn't because his back was so stiff. "Now I am an old man and I shall never see another summer. Good-bye." And Fuzzy Caterpillar rolled himself up in a gray blanket and hung himself on the end of a dried twig. "This is the last of me," he said once more as the dried little grub he now was rattled around in ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey



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