W8286 Cercropia Moth And Cocoons

If you look on shrubs or bushes in the spring you can find cocoons like the ones in this picture. If you cut the branch carefully and take it to your schoolroom, some day you will see a beautiful moth come out of the cocoon. It will have brown wings with markings of white, red, and buff.

The mother moth lays her eggs on the leaves of a willow, or maple, or a lilac bush. When the eggs hatch little caterpillars come out. They begin to eat right away, and grow very rapidly. Their outside skin soon becomes too small. Then they wriggle out of that skin. These caterpillars shed their skin in that way about five times. They spin silk about themselves and attach themselves to branches or twigs. They go spinning until they have finished cocoons. Then they do not move or eat, but just rest quietly. If the cocoon is handled too roughly the little animals may be killed. After a long time a moth comes out of each cocoon. It is helpless at first and its wings are soft and flabby. It rests a while; its wings become strong, and then it is ready to fly about.

Copyright The Keystone View Co.

7862 Yellow Swallowtail Butterfly

Copyright The Keystone View Co.

15993 Flamingoes In A Public Park, Australia

These long-legged birds are called flamingoes. They wade in the water to get their food. Does this tell you why their legs are so long? Look at their long necks. How do they help flamingoes to get their food? Do you see anything different about the shape of their bills? How could that help them? They find their food under the mud. Do you see how they could use their feet to help get food? What other water birds do you know that have feet like these? What do you call that kind of feet?

Flamingoes build their nests in water. They make them of piles of mud. They make them so the tops are out of the water. What do birds build nests for? What do they put in their nest? The mother flamingo puts one or two eggs in her nest? What must she do with her legs when she sits on the nest? Do you see one in the picture who looks as she might be going to sit down?

Why do these birds need such long wings? They are very pretty when they fly. They stretch their necks out front and their legs out behind and float away.

Copyright The Keystone View Co.

11422 "Isn't Our Stock Looking Fine?"

Tom and Helen call the animals in this picture their stock and are very proud of them. The children live in the city and cannot keep a cow, so their father gave them some rabbits for livestock. These raised large families, for rabbits like many baby bunnies.

Count the big and little ones in the picture. Can you find more than twenty? Look at their long ears, their funny short tails and their soft fur. Rabbits do not run like cats and dogs. Instead they hop over the ground, for their hind legs are much longer than their front legs. Some large wild rabbits can go fifteen feet at one jump.

Should you like to live where there are many wild rabbits? There the farmers must put up wire fences around cattle pastures to keep the rabbits out. If they get in they eat up the grass the cattle need.

We use their fur for making warm winter clothes. We eat their flesh. So Tom and Helen can sell their livestock. The money they get will go into Postal Savings Stamps. It will be saved.

The three puppies cannot be used as we used rabbits. We do not eat puppies. But they can be sold, and when they grow up they will make good pets.

Don't you wish you had this stock?

Copyright The Keystone View Co.

23086 Chicken Ranch In California

Where do so many hens come from? Why, everyone of them came from an egg. Maybe a hen mother sat upon her eggs for three weeks to keep them warm. At the end of that time little soft downy chickens pecked their way out of their shells. They did not need to stay in the nest and wait for their feathers to grow. They could run about in just a little while.

On a large hen farm like this eggs are hatched in incubators and not by hens. An incubator is a great box heated so that the eggs are kept just warm enough to hatch. A hen can sit upon twelve or fifteen eggs. A large incubator will hold hundreds.

Why do people keep hens? Of course you know it is to raise food. But most of all we keep hens for their eggs. Many kinds of eggs are good to eatóthere are fish eggs and turtle eggs, besides the eggs of turkeys, geese and ducks. But the eggs we eat most are laid by hens. One year the hens in our country laid so many egg that every person in the whole world might have had a dozen to eat. Think how much cackling the hens did that year!

Copyright The Keystone View Co.