By the Roadside (Dunn and Troxell)/The Polyphemus Children

You remember Polyphemus had not left all her eggs in one place. Some of them were on oak leaves. Some were on elm leaves, and some she had put on the leaves of a maple tree.
The eggs stayed on the leaves for ten days. At first they were white with a brown line around them. After a time they turned brown all over.
Then the babies in the eggs were ready to come out of their shells. Each baby set to work and bit a hole in the side of his egg shell.
Polyphemus had no mouth, to be sure. But her babies had mouths. And such funny mouths! They did not open up and down, as your mouth does. They opened from side to side. The babies ​did not have soft lips either. They had hard horny jaws.
With these jaws the babies bit their way out of the egg shells. Perhaps they liked the taste of those egg shells. At any rate, as soon as they were out, they turned round and ate up the shells.
Now I suppose you think these babies were wee, wee moths, with brown wings and blue eye-spots. But they were not moths at all. They were tiny yellow caterpillars with big red heads.
These tiny caterpillars could not fly like their mother. But, oh, how they could eat! They did not have far to go to find food. What the

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