Moths of the Limberlost: A Book About Limberlost Cabin

e history. Any intimate friend of mine can testify that yellow is my favourite colour, with shades of lavender running into purple, second choice. When I found a yellow moth, liberally de

he body covered sparsely with long hairs; or they might be brown, with markings of darker brown and black with white hairs; but they would be at least three inches long when full grown, and would have a queer habit of rearing and drawing leaves to their mo

, a shooter of oil wells, whom I frequently met while at my work, sit

"I went to give Mr. Porter a peep to see if he thought you'd want them, and they both got away. He was quicker

them?" I ask

ne of the kind. They are big as

Yellow! Didn't you know better than to open

box, but I had shown them a dozen times to-day and they never moved.

found a large female Eacles Imperialis, with not a scale of down misplaced. Even by gas light I could see that the yellow of the living moth was a warm

out, and then removed the lid. Every opening was tightly screened, and as she had mated, I did not think she

case, for these are of the moths that do not eat, and live only a few days after depositing their eggs. So I went out and explained to Mr. Pettis what efforts I had made to secure this yellow moth, comforted him for allowing the male

stry that covered them, and she was clinging to a velvet curtain at a library window, liberally dotting it with eggs, almost as yellow as her body. I tur

il they have finished egg depositing, and this one was transferred with no trouble to the spot on which I had focused. On the back wall of the Cabin, among some wild roses, she was placed on a log, and immediately raised her wings, and started for the sha

, and in a brush-heap a brown thrush nested. From a red winter pearmain the singer poured out his own heart in song, and then reproduced the love ecstasy of every other bird of the orchard. That moth's wings were so exactly the warm though

front, were markings of heliotrope, quite dark in colour: Near the costa of the front wings were two almost circular dots of slightly paler heliotrope, the one nearest the edge about half the size of the other. On the back wings, halfway from each edge, and half an inch from the marking at the base, was one round spot of the same colour. Beginning at the apex of the front pair, and running to half an inch from the lo

lower sides of the wings were yellow at the base, the spots showing through, but not the bands, and only the faintest touches of the mottling. The thorax and abdomen were yellow

llowed accurately, and the ground work of colour was warm cowslip yellow. The only difficulty was to make the a

they showed a red line three fourths of the way around the rim, and became slightly depressed in the middle. The young emerged in thirteen days. They were nearly half an inch long, and w

ulted on the fifth day for the first time, and changed to a brown colour. Every five or six days they repeated the process, growing lar

ement pupated on a bed of baked gravel, in a tin bucket. It is imperative to bake any earth or sand used

y, the feet and claspers seemed to draw inside, and one morning on going to look there were some greenish brown pupae. They shone as if freshly varnished, as indeed they were, for the substance provided to facilitate the emergence o

ng a glass lid. It was filled with baked sand, covered with sphagnum moss, slightly dampened occasionally, and placed where it was cool, but never at actual freezing point. The followin

height of Ferris wheels and diving towers. The lights must have shone against the sky for miles around, for they drew fro

emerge in cities under any tree on which their caterpillars feed. Once late in May, in the corner of a lichen-covered, old snake fence beside the Wabash on the Shimp farm, I made a series of studies of the home life of a pair of ground sparrows. They had chosen for a location a slight depression

packing at the close of the day I lifted the plant to carry home for my wild flower bed. Bel

r the trees on which they feed grow. When the serious business of life is over, attracted by stro

joys of the carnival, but I truly think he liked the chase better. One he brought me, a female, was so especially large that I took her to the Cabin to be measured, and found her to be six and three quarter inches, and of the lightest yellow of any s

kings were selected, for my studies of a pair. One male was mounted and a very large female on acc

d upon me as in an experience with Imperialis. Molly-Cotton was attending a house-party, and her host had chartered a pavilion at a city park for

s crowded around him with exclamations of wonder and delight, he

answered, "Yes.

e responded

the graduate of a commissioned high school. There were girls who were students at The Castle, Smi

hemus Cecropia Regalis," she said. T

ried the host. "Wher

umbler turned over their eggs on the dining-room floor, and you dared not si

t with their egg

ths," answered poor Molly-Cotton, who had been taught to fear so few living things t

orus arose to a shriek

hey bit

fine big fellows; their colouring is exquisite; and they evolve these beautiful moths. I

t as great a moth enthusiast as any of us. This incident will be recognized as furnishing the basis on which to build the ballroom scene in "A Girl of the Limberlost", in which Philip and Edith quarrel over the capture