Note 3 — Chapter IV · THE PINE PROCESSIONARY: METEOROLOGY
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos translation
His capacity for scenting bad weather very soon won the confidence of the household. When we had to go into Orange to renew our provisions, it became the rule to consult him the night before; and, according to his verdict, we went or stayed at home. His oracle never deceived us. In the same way, simple folk that we were, we used in the old days to interrogate the Dor-beetle,3 another doughty nocturnal worker. But, a little demoralized by imprisonment in a cage and apparently devoid of any special sensitive apparatus, performing his evolutions, moreover, in the mild autumn evenings, the celebrated Dung-beetle could never rival the Pine Caterpillar, who is active during the roughest season of the year and endowed, as everything would seem to affirm, with organs quick to perceive the great atmospheric fluctuations.