70 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles 



Although these night-butterflies are very con- 

 spicuous and measure about five-and-a-half inches 

 across their expanded wings, with each of their 

 posterior or back wings lengthened out to form a 

 tail an inch-and-a-half or more long; still there 

 are many people who never saw one. That is not 

 all; they never will see one unless some one of you 

 boys shows them a specimen. 



The larva, caterpillar, or baby of the Luna mil- 

 ler (Fig. G7) eats from the time it hatches from 

 the egg until it grows to a great fat caterpillar 

 the size of your index finger. It then turns pink, 

 or flesh-color, and gets ready to spin its cocoon. 

 Then it stops eating forever! 



No, it does not die, it simply stops eating. Of 

 course, when the pupa, or chrysalis, is locked up 

 in a cocoon, it cannot eat. When, later on, it cracks 

 the pupa shell and crawls out a winged insect, it 

 is too dainty and too beautiful to engage in any 

 such common and vulgar pastime as eating. It 

 simply lives on what it ate while it was a common 

 despised worm. 



When the mother moon miller lays her eggs on 

 the underside of leaves or on twigs, the eggs are as 

 white as those of white Leghorn hens, but later on 



