thin white case, among the leaves under the shelter of logs and stumps. Io spins so slightly in confinement that the pupa case and cast skin show through. I never have found a pupa out of doors, but this is a ground caterpillar.

Sometimes the caterpillar has been stung and bad an egg placed in its skin by a parasite, before pupation. In such case the pupa is destroyed by the developing fly. Throughout one winter I was puzzled by the light weight of what appeared to be a good Polyphemus cocoon, and at time for emergence amazed by the tearing and scratching inside the cocoon, until what I think was an Ophion fly appeared. It was honey yellow, had antennae long as its extremely long body, the abdomen of which was curved and the segments set together so as to appear notched. The wings were transparent and the insect it seems is especially designed to attack Polyphemus caterpillars and help check a progress that otherwise might become devastating.

Among the moths that do not feed, the year of their evolution is divided into about seven days for the life of the moth, from fifteen to thirty for the eggs, from five to six weeks for the caterpillar and the remainder of the time in the pupa stage. The rule differs with feeding moths only in that after mating and egg placing they take food and live several months, often until quite heavy frosts have fallen.

One can admire to fullest extent the complicated organism, wondrous colouring, and miraculous life processes in the evolution of a moth, but that is all. Their faces express nothing; their attitudes tell no story. There is the marvellous instinct through which the males locate the opposite sex of their species; but one cannot see instinct in the face of any creature; it must develop in acts. There is no part of their lives that makes such pictures of mother-love as birds and animals afford. The male finds a mate and disappears. The female places her eggs and goes out before her caterpillars break their shells. The caterpillar transforms to the moth without its consent, the matter in one upbuilding the other. The entire process is utterly devoid of sentiment, attachment or volition on the part of the creatures involved. They work out a law as inevitable as that which swings suns, moons, and planets in their courses. They are the most fragile and beautiful result of natural law with which I am acquainted.

CHAPTER III The Robin Moth: Cecropia

When only a little child, wandering alone among the fruits and flowers of our country garden, on a dead peach limb beside the fence I found it—my first Cecropia. I was the friend of every bird, flower, and butterfly. I carried crumbs to the warblers in the sweetbrier; was lifted for surreptitious peeps at the hummingbird nesting in the honeysuckle; sat within a few feet of the robin in the catalpa; bugged the currant bushes for the phoebe that had built for years under the roof of the corn bin; and fed young blackbirds in the hemlock with worms gathered from the cabbages. I knew how to insinuate myself into the private life of each bird that homed on our farm, and they were many, for we valiantly battled for their protection with every kind of intruder. There were wrens in the knot holes, chippies in the fences, thrushes in the brush heaps, bluebirds in the hollow apple trees, cardinals in the bushes, tanagers in the saplings, fly-catchers in the trees, larks in the wheat, bobolinks in the clover, killdeers beside the creeks, swallows in the chimneys, and martins under the barn eaves. My love encompassed all feathered and furred creatures.

Every day visits were paid flowers I cared for most. I had been taught not to break the garden blooms, and if a very few of the wild ones were taken, I gathered them carefully, and explained to the plants that I wanted them for my mother because she was so ill she could not come to them any more, and only a few touching her lips or lying on her pillow helped her to rest, and made vivid the fields and woods when the pain was severe.

My love for the butterflies took on the form of adoration. There was not a delicate, gaudy, winged creature of day that did not make so strong an appeal to my heart as to be almost painful. It seemed to me that the most exquisite thoughts of God for our pleasure were materialized in their beauty. My soul always craved colour, and more brilliancy could be found on one butterfly wing than on many flower faces. I liked to slip along the bloom-bordered walks of that garden and stand spell-bound, watching a black velvet butterfly, which trailed wings painted in white, red, and green, as it clambered over a clump of sweet-williams, and indeed, the flowers appeared plain compared with it! Butterflies have changed their habits since then. They fly so high! They are all among the treetops now. They used to flit around the cinnamon pinks, larkspur, ragged-robins and tiger lilies, within easy reach of little fingers, every day. I called them 'flying flowers,' and it was a pretty conceit, for they really were more delicate in texture and brighter in colouring than the garden blooms.

Having been taught that God created the heavens, earth and all things therein, I understood it to mean a literal creation of each separate thing and creature, as when my father cut down a tree and hewed it into a beam. I would spend hours sitting so immovably among the flowers of our garden that the butterflies would mistake me for a plant and alight on my head and hands, while I strove to conceive the greatness of a Being who could devise and colour all those different butterfly wings. I would try to decide whether He created the birds, flowers, or butterflies first; ultimately coming to the conclusion that He put His most exquisite material into the butterflies, and then did the best He could with what remained, on the birds and flowers.

In my home there was a cellar window on the south, covered with wire screening, that was my individual property. Father placed a box beneath it so that I could reach the sill easily, and there were very few butterflies or insects common to eastern North America a specimen of which had not spent some days on that screen, feasted on leaves and flowers, drunk from saucers of sweetened water, been admired and studied in minutest detail, and then set free to enjoy life as before. With Whitman, "I never was possessed with a mania for killing things." I had no idea of what families they were, and I supplied my own names. The Monarch was the Brown Velvet; the Viceroy was his Cousin; the Argynnis was the Silver Spotted; and the Papilio Ajax was the Ribbon butterfly, in my category. There was some thought of naming Ajax, Dolly Varden; but on close inspection it seemed most to resemble the gayly striped ribbons my sisters wore.

I was far afield as to names, but in later years with only a glance at any specimen I could say, "Oh, yes! I always have known that. It has buff-coloured legs, clubbed antennae with buff tips, wings of purplish brown velvet with escalloped margins, a deep band of buff lightly traced with black bordering them, and a pronounced point close the apex of the front pair. When it came to books, all they had to teach me were the names. I had captured and studied butterflies, big, little, and with every conceivable variety of marking, until it was seldom one was found whose least peculiarity was not familiar to me as my own face; but what could this be?

It clung to the rough bark, slowly opening and closing large wings of grey velvet down, margined with bands made of shades of grey, tan, and black; banded with a broad stripe of red terra cotta colour with an inside margin of white, widest on the back pair. Both pairs of wings were decorated with half-moons of white, outlined in black and strongly flushed with terra cotta; the front pair near the outer margin had oval