There was another, a rug of pure silk, that never
could have touched a floor, or been trusted outside
a case, had it been my property, that beyond all question
took its exquisite combinations of browns and tans
with pink lines, and peacock blue designs from Polyphemus.
A third could have been copied from no moth save
Modesta, for it was dove grey, mouse grey, and cinnamon
brown, with the purplish pink of the back wings, and
exactly the blue of their decorations. Had this
rug been woven of silk, as the brown one, that moment
would have taught me why people sometimes steal when
they cannot afford to buy. Examination of the
stock of any importer of high grade rugs will convince
one who knows moths, that many of our commonest or
their near relatives native to the Orient are really
used as models for colour combinations in rug weaving.
The Herat frequently has moths in its border.
The Modest moth has a wing sweep in large females
of from five and one-half to six inches. In
my territory they are very rare, only a few caterpillars
and one moth have fallen to me. This can be
accounted for by the fact that the favourite food tree
of the caterpillar is so scarce, for some reason having
become almost extinct, except in a few cases where
they are used for shade.
The eggs are a greyish green, and have the pearly
appearance of almost all moth eggs. On account
of white granules, the caterpillar cannot fail to
be identified. The moths in their beautiful soft
colouring are well worth search and study.
They are as exquisitely shaded as any, and of a
richness difficult to describe.
CHAPTER XIV The Pride of the Lilacs: Attacus Promethea
So far as the arrangement ofthe subjects of this book
in 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 complete
portrayal of each stage in the evolution of one cocoon
and one pupa case moth. I began with Cecropia,
the commonest of all and one of the most beautiful
for the spinners, and ended with Regalis, of earth—and
the rarest.
The luck I had in securing Regalis 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 every-day 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 remember that we ever found any
like these,” he said. `Would you be interested
in them?’
