MOTHS OF THE LIMBERLOST 



be harmful, so I gave it the freedom of the Cabin, warn- 

 ing all my family to "look well to their footsteps." It 

 stopped travelling after a day or two at a screen covering 

 the music-room window, and there I found it one morn- 

 ing lying still, a shrivelled, shrunken thing, only half the 

 former length, so it was carefully picked up, and thrown 

 away ! 



Of course the caterpillar was in the process of changing 

 into the pupa, and if I had known enough to lay it on 

 the sand in my box, and wait a few days, without doubt a 

 fine pupa would have emerged from that shrunken skin, 

 from which, in the spring, I could have secured an ex- 

 quisite moth, with shades of olive green, flushed with 

 pink. The thought of it makes me want to hide my head. 

 It was six years before I found a living moth, or saw 

 another caterpillar of that species. 



A few days later, while watching with a camera focused 

 on the nest of a blackbird in Mrs. Corson's woods east of 

 town, Raymond, who was assisting me, crept to my side 

 and asked if it would do any harm for him to go specimen 

 hunting. The long waits with set cameras were ex- 

 tremely tedious to the restless spirits of the boy, 

 and the birds were quite tame, the light was under a 

 cloud, and the woods were so deep that after he had 

 gone a few rods he was from sight, and under cover; 

 besides it was great hunting ground, so I gladly told him 

 to go. 



214 



