84 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



Here is the life history of the kina. This is one of our com- 

 monest moths and to me it is the most beautiful, it is so dainty. 

 Just taking these luna cocoons in my hand has disturbed the pu- 

 pae and they are rolling over and over and over inside. It is very 

 interesting to watch them hatch. The cocoons do not hang onto 

 the branch like the Cecropia, but the caterpillar when it gets its 

 growth comes down under the trees and spins the cocoon down 

 among the dry leaves and grass. And it has a peculiar way 01 

 getting out. I have read a great many things about the luna 

 and I have watched a great many of them hatch but I never 

 learned until this year how they got out. The silk is very tough 

 and we wondered how they 'got out of that silk until one day 

 this summer one of the girls said "I am going to find out how 

 that luna gets out of its cocoon," and she held it in her hands 

 and watched it closely. As the hole began to show and it 

 stuck out its antennse and got out she found on the shoulders 

 as we would call it, right where the wings join the body, two 

 little tiny hooks as sharp as needles and not more than an 

 eighth of an inch long, and as he kept working his shoulders 

 these little hooks kept tearing the silk threads, and that was the 

 noise we heard. He tore these little silken threads till he got 

 the hole big enough to come out. But he had not been out 

 five minutes when you could not see the hooks. As the down 

 dried out and fluffed over his body it covered those, and I 

 suppose that is the reason we never saw them, because they 

 only showed when the moth was wet. 



Here is the polyphemus, the brown one, very common among 

 us, as common as the others, and the caterpillar looks so much 

 like the luna that you have some difficulty in telling them apart 

 unless you look at the head. The polyphemus has a brown 

 head and the luna a green one. The cocoon of the polyphemus 

 is white and that of the luna is green. These moths are very 

 easy to raise. H you can get a female that has not laid her 

 eggs and can keep the eggs, you can raise the caterpillars very 

 easily. I have raised as many as two thousand lunas in one 

 year by pasturing them out as Proessor Hitchings told me to 

 do. Instead of keeping them in cages at the house and feeding 

 them on leaves, you can make cages of surgeon's gauze or 

 cheese cloth as we call it. We sometimes take mosquito net- 

 ting, and make large bags. Tie the bag right over the end of a 



