 CHAPTER XIV. THE PRIDE OF THE LIELACS. ADICUS PROMETHIA. So far as the arrangement of the subjects of this book and family groupings is concerned, any chapter might come first or last. It is frankly announced as the book of the nature lover, and as such is put together in the form that appears to me easiest to comprehend and most satisfying to examine. I decided that it would be sufficient to explain the whole situation to the satisfaction of any one, if I began the book with a detailed history of moth, egg, caterpillar, and cocoon, and then gave a complete portrayal of each state in the evolution of one cocoon and one pupa case moth. I began with Socropia, the commonest of all, and one of the most beautiful for the spinners, and ended with Regulus, of earth and the rarest. The luck I had in securing Regulus in such complete form seems to me the greatest that ever happened to any worker in this field, and it reads more like a fairy tale than sober everyday fact copiously illustrated with studies from life. At its finish I said, now I am done, this book is completed. Soon afterward, Raymond walked in with a bunch of lilac twigs in his hand, from which depended three rolled leaves, securely bound to their twigs by silk spinning. I don't believe that we ever found any like these, he said, would you be interested in them? Would I? Instantly I knew this book was not finished. As I held the firm, heavy leaf-rolled cocoons in my hand, I could see the last chapter sliding over from 14 to 15 to make place for Promethia, the loveliest of the Atacine group, a cousin of Socropia. Often I had seen the pictured cocoon in its neat little, tight little leaf-covered shelter, and the mounted moss of scientific collections and museums. I knew their beautiful forms and remembered their reddish tinge, flushing the almost black coat of the male and their red wine and clay-colored female with her elaborate marks, spots and lines. Right there the book stopped at Leaffall in early November to await the outcome of these three cocoons. If they would yield a pair in the spring, and if that pair would emerge close enough together to mate and produce fertile eggs, then by fall of the coming year I would have a complete life history. That was a long wait, thickly punctuated with ifs. Then the twig was carried to my room and stood in a vase of intricate workmanship and rare coloring. Every few days I examined these cocoons and tested them by weight. I was sure they were perfect. That spring I had been working all day and often at night, so I welcomed an opportunity to spend a few days at a lake where I would meet many friends. Boating and fishing were fine, while the surrounding country was one uninterrupted panorama of exquisite land and water pictures. I packed and started so hastily I forgot my precious cocoons. Two weeks later on my return, before I entered the cabin, I walked round it to see if my flowers had been properly watered and tended. It was not later than three in the afternoon, but I saw at least a dozen wonderful big moths, dusky and luring, fluttering eagerly over the wild roses covering a south window of the deacons' room adjoining mine on the west. Instantly I knew what that meant. I hurried to the room and found a female Promethea at the top of the screen covering a window that the caretaker had slightly lowered. I caught up a net and ran to bring a step ladder. The back foundation is several feet high and that threw the tops of the windows close under the eaves. I mounted to the last step and balancing made a sweep to capture a moth. They could see me and scattered in all directions. I waited until they were beginning to return, when from the thicket of leaves emerged a deep rose-flush little moth that sailed away with every black one in pursuit. I almost fell from the ladder. I went inside only to learn that what I feared was true. The wind had loosened the screen in my absence and the moth had passed through a crack so narrow it seemed impossible for it to escape. Only those interested as I was and who have had similar experience know how to sympathize. I had thought a crowbar would be required to open one of those screens. With sinking heart I hurried to my room. Joy, there was yet hope. The escaped moth was the only one that had emerged. The first thing was to fasten the screen, the next to live with the remaining cocoons. The following morning another female appeared and a little later a male. The cocoons were long, slender, closely leaf-wrapped and hung from stout spinning longer than the average leaf stem. The outside leaf covering easily could be peeled away as the spinning did not seem to adhere except at the edges. There was a thin waterproof coating as with sucropia, then a little loose spinning that showed most at top and bottom, the leaf wrapping being so closely drawn that it was plastered against the body of the heavy inner case around the middle until it adhered. The inner case was smooth and dark inside and the broken pupa case nearly black. The male and female differed more widely in color and markings than any moths with which I had worked. At a glance the male reminded me of a monster morning cloak butterfly. The front wings from the base extending over half the surface were a dark brownish-black outlined with a narrow, escaloped line of clay color of light shade. The black color from here lightened as it neared the margin. At the apex it changed to a reddish-brown tinge that surrounded the typical eye spot of all the Atticus group for almost three fours of its circumference. The bottom of the eye was blackish-blue shading abruptly to pale blue at the top. The straggle M of white was in its place at the extreme tip on the usual rose-matter field. From there a broad clay-colored band edged the wing and joined the dark color in a scallops. Through the middle of it in an irregular wavy line was traced an almost hair-fine marking of strong brown. The back wings were darker than the darkest part of the four wings, and this color covered them to the margin, lightening very slightly. A clay-colored band boarded the edge, touched with irregular splashes of dark brown. A little below them, a slightly heavier line than that on the four wing, which seemed to follow the outline of the decorations. Underneath the wings were exquisitely marked, flushed and shaded almost past description in delicate and nearly intangible reddish browns, rose-matter on gray, pink-tinged brown and clay-color. On the four wings the field from base to first line was reddish-brown, with a slight tinge of tan beside the costa. From this to the clay-colored border my descriptive powers fail. You could see almost any shade for which you looked. There were grayish places flushed with scales of red and white so closely set that the result was frosty pink. Then the background would change to brown with the same over-decoration. The bottom of the eye-spot was dark only about one-fourth the way. The remaining three-fourths, tan-color, outlined at the top was pale blue and black in fine lines. The white M showed through on a reddish background, as did the brown line of the clay border. The back wings wide-spread were even lovelier. Beginning about the eighth of an inch from the top was a whitish line tracing a marking that when taken as a whole on both out-spread wings, on some slightly resembled a sugar maple leaf, and on others the perfect profile of a face. There was a small oblong figure of pinkish white where the eye would fall, and the field of each space was brownish red velvet. From this to the clay-colored band with its paler brown markings and lines, the pink and white scales sprinkled the brown ground, most of the pink around the marking, more of the white in the middle of the space, so few of either that it appeared to be brown where the clay border joined. The antennae were shaped as all of the Atticus group, but larger in proportion to size. From my biggest Promethea measured only four and a quarter from tip to tip, and for his inches carried larger antlers than any Sacropia I have ever seen of this measurement, those of the male being very much larger than the female. In color they were similar to the darkest part of the wings, as were the back of the head, thorax, and abdomen. The hair on the back of the thorax was very long. The face were a pink flush over brown, the eyes bright brown, the under thorax covered with long pinkish brown hairs, and the legs the same. A white stripe ran down each side of the abdomen, touched with a dot of brownish red wine color on the rings. The under part was pinkish wine, crossed with a narrow white line at each segment. The claspers were prominent and sharp. The finishing touch of the exquisite creation lay in the fact that in motion, in strong light, the red wine shadings of the underside cast an intangible, elusive, rosy flush over the dark back of the moth that was the most delicate and loveliest color effect I ever have seen on marking a flower, bird, or animal. For the first time in all my experience with moths, the female was less than the male. Even the eggs of this mated pair carried a pinkish white shade and were stained with brown. They were ovoid in shape and dotted the screen door in rows. The tiny caterpillars were out eleven days later and proved to be of the kind that marched independently from their shells without stopping to feed on them. Of every food offered the youngsters seemed to prefer lilac leaves. I remembered that they had passed the winter wrapped in these, dangling from their twigs, and that the under wings of the male and much of the female bore a flushing of color that was lilac, for what else is red wine veiled with white. So I promptly christened them the pride of the lilacs. They were said to eat ash, apple, pear, willow, plum, cherry, poplar, and many other leaves, but mine liked lilac, and there was a supply in reach of the door, so they undoubtedly were lilac caterpillars, for they had nothing else to eat. The little fellows were pronouncedly yellow. The black head with a gray stripe joined the thorax with a yellow band. The body was yellow with black rings. The anal parts black. The legs pale greenish yellow. They made their first molt on the tenth day, and when ready to eat again they were stronger yellow than before, with many touches of black. They molted four times, each producing slight changes until the third, when the body took on a greenish tinge, delicate and frosty in appearance. The heads were yellow with touches of black, and the anal shield even stronger yellow with black. At the last molt there came a touch of red on the thorax, and of deep blue on the latter part of the body. In spinning they gummed over the upper surface of a leaf, and covering it with silk drew it together so that nothing could be seen of the work inside. They began spinning some on the forty-second, some on the forty-third day, went about three inches in length, and plumped to bursting. I think at a puncture in the skin they would have spurred like a fountain. They began spinning at night, and were from sight before I went to them the following morning. So I hunted a box and packed them away with utmost care. I selected a box in which some mounted moss had been sent me by a friend in Louisiana, and when I went to examine my cocoons towards spring, to my horror I found the contents of the box chopped to pieces, and totally destroyed. Pestiferous little clothes moss must have infested the box, for there were none elsewhere in the cabin. For a while this appeared to be too bad luck, but when luck turned squarely against you, that is the time to test the essence and quality of the word friend. So I sat me down and wrote to my friend Professor Raleigh of Missouri, and told him I wanted Promethea for the completion of this book, that I had an opportunity to make studies of them, and my plate was light-struck, and house moss had eaten my cocoons. Could he do anything? To be sure he could. I am very certain he sent me two dozen perfectly good cocoons. From the abundance of males that have come to seek females of this species at the cabin, ample proof seems furnish that they are a very common limber-loss product, but I never have found even when searching for them, or had brought to me a cocoon of this variety, save the three on one little branch found by Raymond, when he did not know what they were. Because of the length of spinning which these caterpillars use to attach their cocoons, they dangle freely in the wind, and this gives them a special freedom from attack. CHAPTER XV THE KING OF THE POETS CETHERONIA REGULIS To the impetuosity of youth I owe my first acquaintance with the rarest moth of the limber-lost. Not common anywhere, say scientific authorities. Molly Cotton and I were driving to Portland Town, ten miles south of our home. As customary I was watching fields, woods, fence corners, and roadside in search of subjects. For many beautiful cocoons and caterpillars, much to be desired, have been located while driving over the country on business or pleasure. With the magnificent independence of the young, Molly Cotton would have scouted the idea that she was searching for moss also. But I smiled inwardly as I noticed her check the horse several times and scan a wayside bush or stretch of snake-fence. We were approaching the limits of town and had found nothing, a slow rain was falling, and shimmer on bushes and fences made it difficult to see objects plainly. Several times I had asked her to stop the horse or drive close to the fields when I was sure of a moth or caterpillar, though it was very late being close to the end of August, but we found only a dry leaf or some combination that had deceived me. Just on the outskirts of Portland beside a grassy ditch and at the edge of a cornfield grew a cluster of wild tiger lilies. The water in the ditch had kept them in flower long past their bloom time. On one of the stems there seemed to be a movement. Wait a minute, I cried, and Molly Cotton checked the horse but did not stop while I leaned forward and scanned the lilies carefully. What I thought I saw move appeared to be a dry lily bloom of an orange-red color that had fallen and lodged on the grasses against the stalk. It's only a dead lily, I said. Drive on. Is there a moth that color? asked Molly Cotton. Yes, I replied. There is an orange-brown species, but it is rare. I never have seen a living one. So we passed the lilies. A very peculiar thing is that when one grows intensely interested in a subject and works over it, a sort of instinct, an extra sense as it were, is acquired. Three rods away I became certain I had seen something move. So strongly the conviction swept over me that we had passed a moth. Still it was raining and the ditch was wet and deep. I am sorry we did not stop, I said half to myself. I can't have feeling that was a moth. There is where youth in all its impetuosity helped me. If the girl had asked, shall I go back? In all probability I would have answered, no, I must have been mistaken. Drive on. Instead, Molly Cotton, who had straightened herself and touched up her horse for a brisk entrance into town, said, Well, we will just settle that feeling right here. At a trot she definitely cut a curve in the broad road and drove back. She drew close to the edge of the ditch as we approached the lilies. As the horse stopped, what I had taken for a fallen lily bloom suddenly opened over five inches of gorgeous red-brown canary spotted wingsweep and then closed again. It is a moth, we gassed, with one breath. Molly Cotton cramped the wheel on my side of the carriage and started to step down. Then she dropped back to the seat. I am afraid, she said, I don't want you to wade that ditch in the rain, but you never have had a red one, and if I bungle and let it escape, I never will forgive myself. She swung the horse to the other side, and I climbed down. Gathering my skirts, I crossed the ditch as best I could, and reached the lily-bed. But I was trembling until my knees wavered. I stepped between the lilies and the cornfield, leaned over breathlessly, and waded in the pelting rain until the moth again raised its wings above its back. Then, with a sweep learned in childhood, I had it. While crossing the ditch, I noticed there were numbers of heavy yellow paper bags lying where people had thrown them when emptied of bananas and biscuits on leaving town. They were too wet to be safe, but to carry the moth in my fingers would spoil it for a study, so I caught up and drained a big bag, carefully set my treasure inside, and handed it to Molly Cotton. If you consider the word treasure too strong to fit the case, offer me your biggest diamond, ruby, or emerald and recompense for the privilege of striking this chapter with its accompanying illustration from my book and learn what the answer will be. When I entered the carriage and dried my face in hands, we peeped, marveled, and exclaimed in wonder, for this was the most gorgeous moth of our collections. We hastened to Portland, where we secured a large box at a store. In order that it might not be dark and set the moth beating in flight, we copiously punctured it with as large holes as we dared, and bound the lid securely. On the way home we searched the lilies and roadside for a mile, but could find no trace of another moth. Indeed, it seemed a miracle that we had found this one late in August, for the time of their emergence is supposed to be from middle May to the end of June. Professor Rowley assures me that in rare instances a moth will emerge from a case or cocoon two seasons old, and finding this one and the Luna prove it is well for nature students to be watchful from May until October. Because these things happen to me in person, I made bold to introduce the capture of a late moth into the experience of Edith Carr in the last chapter of A Girl of the Limberlost. I am pointing out some of these occurrences as I come to them in order that you may see how closely I keep to life and truth, even in books exploited as fiction. There may be such incidents that are pure imagination incorporated, but as I write I can recall no instance similar to this in any book of mine that is not personal experience, or that did not happen to other people within my knowledge, or was not told me by someone whose word I consider unquestionable, allowing very little material indeed on the last provision. There is one other possibility to account for the moth at this time. Beyond all question, the gorgeous creature is of tropical origin. It has made its way north from south or central America. It occurs more frequently in Florida and Georgia than with us, and there it is known to have been double brooded, so standing on the records of professional lepidopterists that gives rise to grounds for the possibility that in some of our long, almost tropical Indiana summers, regalists may be double brooded with us. At any rate, many people saw the living moth in my possession on the state. In fact, I am prepared to furnish abundant proof of every statement contained in this chapter, while at the same time admitting that it reads like the various fairy tale ever thought or wondered. The storm had passed and the light was fine, so we posed the moth before the camera several times. It was nervous business, for he was becoming restless, and every instant I expected him to fly, but of course we kept him guarded. There was no hope of a female that late date, so the next step was to copy his colors and markings as exactly as possible. He was the gaudiest moth of my experience, and his name seemed to suit rarely well—Sytheronia, a Greek poet, and regalists, regal. He was truly royal and enough to inspire poetry in a man of any nation. His face was orange-brown, of so bright a shade that any one at a glance would have called it red. His eyes were small for his eyes, and his antennae long, fine, and pressed against the face so closely it had to be carefully scrutinized to see them. A band of bright canary yellow arched above them. His thorax was covered above with long, silky, orange-brown hairs, and striped lengthwise with the same yellow. His abdomen was the longest and slenderest I had seen, elegantly curved like a vase, and reaching a quarter of an inch beyond the back wings, which is unusual. It was thickly covered with long hair, and faintly lined at the segments with yellow. The claspers were very sharp, prominent brown hooks. His sides were dotted with alternating red and orange-brown spots, and his thorax beneath yellow. The underside of the abdomen was yellow, strongly shaded with orange-brown. His legs and feet were the same. His four wings were a silvery lead color, each vein covered with a stripe of orange-brown three times its width. The costa began in lead color, and at half its extent shaded into orange-brown. Each front wing had six yellow spots, and a seventh faintly showing. Half an inch from the apex of the wings and against the costa lay the first and second spots, oblong in shape, and wide enough to cover the space between veins. The third was a tiny dot next to second. The hint of one crossed the next vein, and the other three formed a triangle. One lay at the costa about three-quarters of an inch from the base, the second at the same distance from the base at the back edge of the wing, and the third formed the apex, and fell in the middle, on the fifth space between veins, counting from either edge. These were almost perfectly round. The back wings were very hairy, of a deep orange brown at the base, shading to lighter tones of the same color at the edge, and faintly clouded in two patches with yellow. Underneath the four wings were yellow at the base, and lead color the remainder of their length. The veins had the orange-red outlining, and the two large yellow dots at the costa showed through as well as the small one beside them. Then came another little yellow dot of the same size, but that did not show on the upper side, and then four larger round spots between each vein. Two of them showed in the triangle on the upper side full size, and the two between could be seen in the mirror's speck, if looked for very closely. The back wings underneath were yellow three-fourths of their length, then next the abdomen began a quarter of an inch wide band of orange brown that crossed the wing to the third vein from the outer edge, and there shaded into lead color and covered the space to the margin. The remainder of the wing below this band was a lighter shade of yellow than above it. From tip to tip he measured five and a half inches, and from head to point of abdomen a little over two. While I was talking regalus, and delighted over finding so late in the season, the only one I lacked to complete my studies of every important species, Arthur Fenzler brought me a large regalus caterpillar full fed, and in the last stages of the two days of exercise that every caterpillar seems to take before going into the pupa state. It was late in the evening, so I put the big fellow in a covered bucket of soft earth from the garden, planning to take his picture the coming day. Before morning he had burrowed into the earth from sight and was pupating, so there was great risk in disturbing him. I was afraid there were insects in the earth that would harm him, as care had not been taken to bake it as should have been done. A day later Willis Glendening brought me another regalus caterpillar. I made two pictures of it, although transformation to the pupa stage was so far advanced that it was only half length, and had a shriveled appearance like the one I once threw away. I was disgusted with the picture at the time, but now I feel that it is very important in the history of transformation from caterpillar to pupa, and I am glad to have it. Two days later Andrew Idlewine, a friend to my work, came to the deacon with a box. He said that he thought maybe I would like to take a picture of the fellow inside, and if I did he wanted a copy, and he wished he knew what the name of it was. He had found it on a butternut tree, and used great care in taking it lest it horn him. He was horrified when the deacon picked it up and demonstrated how harmless it was. This is difficult to believe, but it was a third regalus, and came into my possession at night again. My only consolation was that it was feeding, and would not pupae until I could make a picture. This one was six inches from tip to tip, the largest caterpillar I ever saw, a beautiful blue-green color, with legs of tan marked with black, each segment having four small sharp horns on top, and on the sides an oblique dash of pale blue. The head bore ten horns. Four of these were large, an inch in length, colored tan at the base, black at the tip. The foremost pair of this formidable array turned forward over the face, all the others back, and the outside six of the ten were not quite the length of the largest ones. The first caterpillar had measured five inches, and the next one three, but it was transforming. Whether the others were males and this a female, or whether it was only that it had grown under favorable conditions, I could not tell. It was differently marked on the sides, and in every way larger and brighter than the others, and had not finished feeding. Knowing that it was called the horned hickory devil at times, hickory and walnut leaves were placed in its box, and it evinced a decided preference for the hickory. As long as it ate, and seemed a trifle larger, it was fed. The day it walked over fresh leaves and began the preliminary travel, it was placed on some hickory sprouts around an old stump and exposures made on it, or rather on the places it had been, for it was extremely restless and difficult to handle. Two plates were spoiled for me by my subject walking out of focus as I snapped, but twice it was caught broadside in good position. While I was working with this caterpillar, there came one of my clearest cases of things that thrust themselves upon me. I would have preferred to concentrate all my attention on the caterpillar, for it was worthwhile, but in the midst of my work a katydid deliberately walked down the stump and stopped squarely before the lens to wash her face and make her toilet. She was on the side of the stump and so clearly outlined by the lens that I could see her long, wavering antennae on the ground glass, and of course she took two plates before she resumed her travels. I long had wanted a katydid for an illustration. I got that one merely by using what was before me. All I did was to swing the lens about six inches and shift the focus slightly to secure two good exposures of her in fine positions. My caterpillar almost escaped while I worked, for it had put in the time climbing to the ground and was a yard away herring across the grass at a lively pace. Two days later it stopped traveling and pupated it on the top of the now hardened earth in the bucket that contained the other two. It was the largest of the pupae when it emerged, a big shining greenish brown thing flattened and seeming as if it had been varnished. On the thin pupae case the wing shields and outlines of the head and different parts of the body could be seen. Then a pan of sand was baked and a box with a glass cover was filled. I laid the pupae on top of the sand and then dug up the first one as I was afraid of the earth in which it lay. The case was sound and in fine condition. All of these pupae lived and seemed perfect, narrow and tenny and abdominal formation marked the big one a female while broader antlers and the clearly outlined claspers proved the smaller ones males. A little sphagnum moss which was dampened slightly every few days was kept around them. The one that entered the ground had pushed the earth from it on all sides at a depth of three inches and hollowed in oval space the size of a medium hen egg in which the pupae lay, but there was no trace of its cast skin. Those that pupated on the ground had left their skins at the thorax and lay two inches from them. The horns came off with the skin and the lining of the segments and the covering of the feet showed. At first the cast skins were green, but they soon turned a dirty gray and the horns blackened. So from having no personal experience at all with our rarest moth inside a few days of latter August and early September weeks after hope had been abandoned for the season I found myself with several as fine studies of the male as I could make. One of an immense caterpillar at maturity, one half transformed to the moth and three fine pupae cases. Besides I had every reason to hope that in the spring I could secure eggs and a likeness of a female to complete my illustration. Call this luck, fairy magic, what you will. I admit it sounds too good to be true, but it is. All winter these three fine regalus pupae cases were watched solicitously, as well as my twin sucropius, some polyphemus, and several ground cocoons so spun on limbs and among debris that it was not easy to decide whether they were polyphemus or luna. When spring came and the sucropius emerged at the same time I took heart, for I admit I was praying for a pair of regalus moths from those pupae cases in order that a female, a history of their emergence, and their eggs might be added to the completion of this chapter. In the beginning it was my plan to use the caterpillars and give the entire history of one spinning and one burrowing moth. My sucropia records were complete. I could add the twin series for good measure for the cocoon moth. Now if only a pair would come from these pupae cases I would have what I wanted to compile the history of a ground moth. Until the emergence of the sucropias my cocoons and pupae cases were kept on my dresser. Now I moved the box to a chair beside my bed. That was a lucky thought, for the first moth appeared at midnight for Mr. Idlewine's case. She pushed the wing shields away with her feet and passed through the opening. She was three and one-half inches long, with a big, pursy abdomen, and wings the size of my thumbnail. I was anxious for a picture of her all damp and undeveloped, beside the broken pupae case, but I was so fearful of spoiling my series I dared not touch or try to reproduce her. The head and wings only seemed damp, but the abdomen was quite wet, and the case contained a quantity of liquid, undoubtedly ejected for the purpose of facilitating exit. When you next examine a pupae, study the closeness with which the case fits and tenee, eyes, feet, wings, head, thorax, and abdominal rings, and you will see that it would be impossible for the moth to separate from the case and leave it with down intact if it were dry. Immediately the moth began racing around energetically, and flapping those tiny wings until the sound awakened the deacon in the adjoining room. After a few minutes of exercise, it seemed in danger of injuring the other cases, so it was transferred to the dresser, where it climbed to the lid of a trinket case, and clinging with the feet, the wings hanging, development began. There was no noticeable change in the head and shoulders, save that the down grew fluffier as it dried. The abdomen seemed to draw up and become more compact. No one could comprehend the story of the wings, unless they have seen them develop. At twelve o'clock and five minutes they measured two thirds of an inch from the base of the costa to the tip. At twelve fifteen they were an inch and a quarter. At half past twelve they were two inches. At twelve forty-five they were two and a half, and at one o'clock they were three inches. At complete expansion this moth measured six and a half inches strong, and this full sweep was developed in one hour and ten minutes. To see those large, brilliantly colored wings droop, widen, and develop their markings seemed little short of a miracle. The history of the following days is painful. I not only wanted a series of this moth, as I wanted nothing else concerning the book, but with the riches of the three fine pupa cases of it on hand, I had promised Professor Rowley eggs, from which to obtain its history for himself. I had taxed Mr. Rowley's time and patience, as an expert Lepidopterist, to read my text and examine my illustration, and I hoped in a small way to repay his kindness by sending him a box of fertile regalus eggs. The other pupa cases were healthful and lively, but the moths would not emerge. I coaxed them in the warmth of closed palms. I even laid them undamped moths in the sun in hope of softening the cases and driving the moths out with the heat, but to no avail. They would not come forth. I had made my studies of the big moth when she was fully developed, but to my despair she was depositing worthless eggs over the inside of my screen door. Four days later the egg-laying period over, the female stupid and almost gone, a fine male emerged, and the following day another. I placed some of the sand from the bottom of the box on a brush tray and put these two cases on it, and set a focused camera in readiness, so that I got a side view of a moth just as it emerged, and one facing front when about ready to cling for wing expansion. The history of their appearance was similar to that of the female, only they were smaller and of much brighter color. The next morning I wrote Professor Rowley of my regrets at being unable to send the eggs as I had hoped. At noon I came home from half a day in the fields to find Raymond sitting on the cabin steps with a big box. That box contained a perfect pair of mated regalus This was positively the last appearance of the fairies. Raymond had seen these moths clinging to the underside of a rail while riding. He had once dismounted, coaxed them on a twig, and covering them with his hat he waded the brim with stones. Then he rode to the nearest farmhouse for a box, and brought the pair safely to me. Several beautiful studies of them were made, into one of which I also introduced my last moth to emerge in order to show the males in two different positions. The date was June 10th. The next day the female began egg-placing. A large box was lined with corrugated paper, so that she could find easy footing, and after she had deposited many eggs on this, fearing that some element in it might not be helpful for them, I substituted hickory leaves. Then the happy time began. Soon there were heaps of pearly pale yellow eggs piled in pyramids on the leaves, and I made a study of them. Then I gently lifted a leaf, carried it outdoors, and in full light reproduced the female in the position in which he deposited her eggs, even in the act of placing them. Of course Molly Cotton stood beside with a net in one hand to guard, and an umbrella in the other to shade them off, except at the instant of exposure, but she made no movement indicative of flight. I made every study of interest of which I could think. Then I packed and mailed Professor Raleigh about two hundred fine fertile eggs with all scientific data. I only kept about one dozen, as I could think of nothing more to record of this moth except the fact that I had raised its caterpillar. As I explained in the first chapter, from information found in a work en masse supposed to be scientific and accurate, I depended on those caterpillars to emerge in sixteen days. The season was unusually rainy and unfavorable for field work, and I had a large contract on hand for outdoor stuff. I was so extremely busy I was glad to box the eggs and put them out of mind until the twenty-seventh. By the merest chance I handled the box on the twenty-fourth, and found six caterpillars starved to death, two more feeble, and four that seemed lively. One of these was bitten by some insect that clung to a leaf placed in their box for food, in spite of the fact that all leaves were carefully washed. One died from causes unknown. One stuck in pupation and molded in its skin. Three went through the succession of malts and feeding periods in fine shape, and the first week in September transformed into shiny pupa cases, not one of which was nearly as large as that of the caterpillar brought to me by Mr. Idolvine. I fed these caterpillars on black walnut leaves, as they ate them in preference to hickory. I am slightly troubled about this moth. In Packard's Guide to the Study of Moths, he writes, Scytheronia regalis expands five to six inches, and its four wings are olive-colored, spotted with yellow and veined with broad red lines, while the hind wings are orange red, spotted with olive, green, and yellow. He describes two other species, Scytheronia Mexicana, a tropical moth that has drifted as far north as Mexico. It is quite similar to regalis, having more orange and less red, but it is not recorded as having been found within a thousand miles of my locality. A third small species, Scytheronia sepulcralis expands only a little over three inches, is purple-brown with yellow spots, and is a rare Atlantic coast species, having been found once in Massachusetts, oftener in Georgia, never west of Pennsylvania. This eliminates them as possible limber-loss species. Professor Raleigh raised this moth from the eggs I sent him. The trouble is this. Packer describes the four wings as olive, the hind as olive and green. Holland makes no reference to color, but on plate X, figure three, page 87, he reproduces regalis with four wings of olive green, the remainder of the color as I describe and paint only lighter. In all the regalis moths I have handled raised and studied minutely, painted and photographed, there never has been a tinge or shade of green, not the slightest trace of it. Every moth, male and female, has had a basic color of pure lead or steel gray. White tinge with the proper proportions of black and blue gives the only color that will exactly match it. I have visited my specimen case since writing the proceeding. I find there the bodies of four regalis moths saved after their decline. One is four years old, one three, the others two, all have been exposed to daylight for that length of time. The yellows are slightly faded, the reds very much degraded, the grays a half lighter than when fresh, but showing today a pure clear gray. What troubles me is whether regalis of the limberlost is gray, where the others are green, or whether I am color blind or these men. Referring to other writers, I am growing leery of the word authority. Half of what was written 50 years ago, along almost any line you can mention, today stands disproved. All of us are merely seekers after the truth. So referring to other writers, I find the women of massachusetts who wrote caterpillars and their moths, and who in all probability have raised more different caterpillars for the purpose of securing life history than any other workers of our country, possibly of any state, that the front wings of regalis have stripes of lead color between the veins of the wings and three or four lead colored stripes on the back wings. The remainder of my description and coloring also agrees with theirs. If these men worked from museum or private collections, there is a possibility that chemicals used to kill, preserve, and protect the specimens from pests may have degraded the colors and changed the gray to green. But to accept this as the explanation of the variants, upsets all their color values, so it must not be considered. This proves that there must be a regalis that at times has all of green stripes or minor gray, but I have never seen one. I think people need not fear planting trees on their premises, that will be favorites with caterpillars, in the hope of luring exquisite moths to become common with them. I have put out eggs and released caterpillars near the cabin, literally by the thousand, and never have been able to see the results of a single defoliated branch. Rens, warblers, flycatchers, every small bird of the trees are exploring bark and scanning upper and underleaf surfaces for eggs and tiny caterpillars, and if they escape these, dozens of larger birds are waiting for the half-grown caterpillars. For in almost all instances, these lack enough of the hairy coat of moss butterfly larvae to form any protection. Every season I watch my walnut trees to free them from the imbominable tent caterpillars. With the single exception of Haley Sedota Cariee, I never have had enough caterpillars of any species attack my foliage to be noticeable, and these in only one instance. If you care for moths, you need not fear to encourage them. The birds will keep them within proper limits. If only one person enjoys this book one-tenth as much as I have loved the work of making it, then I am fully repaid.