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It spends most
Wherever they find the milk-weed plant they stop and lay some eggs on the leaves. The caterpillars issue from the eggs, feed on the milkweed, transform to chrysalids; then the butterflies issue and continue the northward flight, stopping to lay eggs farther north on other milkweeds. By the end of June or July some of these Southern butterflies have found their way north into Canada and begin the return flight southward. Along in early August they will be seen at the summer resorts in the Catskill Mountains, and by the end of October they will have traveled far down into the Southern states where they pass the winter. The caterpillar of the monarch or milkweed butterfly is a very striking creature. It is nearly two inches long when full grown. Its head is yellow striped with black; its body is white with narrow black and yellow cross-stripes on each segment. On the back of the second segment of the thorax there is a pair of black, whiplash-like filaments, and on the eighth joint there is a similar shorter pair. When this caterpillar gets ready to transform to chrysalis, it hangs itself up by its tail end, the skin splits and gradually draws back, and the chrysalis itself is revealed--pale pea-green in color with golden spots. Anyone by hunting over a patch of milkweed anywhere in the United States during the summer is quite apt to find these caterpillars feeding. It will be easy to watch them and to see them transform, and eventually to get the butterfly. The same thing may be done with anyone of the six hundred and fifty-two different kinds of butterflies in the United States. Fishes may be roughly classified as fresh water, migratory between fresh and salt water, and marine.
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