ORDER IV.—MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES. has * 
From this statistical table it will be seen that the de- 
crease of raised silk-cocoons in this country amounts to 
50,208 pounds; but at the same time we perceive with 
pleasure that they were rather increasing in the State of 
New York, and still more in Maine, Indiana, and Tennes- 
see. In Kentucky, also, according to the last census, 544 
pounds of silk-cocoons were produced more than at the date 
of the preceding census. 
But our limits will not allow us longer to dwell upon the 
history and rearing of the Silk-worm, and we pass to the 
consideration of its caterpillars, only referring our readers 
for more complete details to the most modern and perhaps 
the best work on the subject, viz., that of Count Dandolo, 
of Venice: * Dell arte di governare i bach da setta. Mila- 
no, 1819.” 
The Cecropia, Polypheme, Luna, and Promethea Moths. 
This noble family of large Moths is, perhaps, the hand- 
somest of all the nocturnal lepidoptera. They are beauti- 
fully covered with soft down, and are ornamented with a 
great variety of splendid colors. It seems, at first view, 
strange that colors so beautiful should be found on insects 
that display themselves only at night; but it is not, after 
all, in dissonance with the poetry of Nature that they should 
be seen sporting only in the calm, starry night, on the soft 
breezes that are laden with delicious fragrance, when the 
fire-flies glisten on the earth like the reflection of twinkling 
stars on the bosom of the placid water, and the mysterious 
whip-poor-will or the lugubrious owl whistle their melan- 
choly music through the sombre forest. Often have we 
roamed through Nature’s open temple till the blazing sun 
had gone to rest; and, overcome with the day’s fatigue, 
have laid us down amidst the fragrance of wild flowers, 
only to dream of things the day could not reveal. Thus 
in the depths of slumber have we often laid, and in dreamy 
G2 
