INTRODUCTION. 99 



the empty cocoon presents just the same appearance 

 as one still inhabited. Rosel relates, with amusing 

 naivete, how this circumstance puzzled him the first 

 time he witnessed it ; he could scarcely help think- 

 ing that there was something supernatural in the 

 appearance of one of these fine moths in a box in 

 which he had put a cocoon of this kind, but in 

 which he could not discover the slightest appearance 

 of any insect having escaped from it, until he slit it 

 longitudinally. But from an observation of Meinec - 

 ken, it appears that these converging threads serve 

 a double purpose ; being necessary to compress the 

 abdomen of the moth as it emerges from the cocoon, 

 which forces the fluid to enter the nervures of the 

 wings, and give them their proper expansion. For 

 he found, that when the pupa is taken out of the 

 cocoon, the moth is disclosed at the proper time, 

 but remains always crippled in its wings, which 

 never expand properly, unless the abdomen be com- 

 pressed with the finger and thumb, so as to imitate 

 the natural operation*." 



Although moths may be characteristically said 

 to be nocturnal insects, i* must not be understood 

 that their appearance is exclusively confined to the 

 night, or even the twilight. The Gamma-moth, the 

 majority of the male Bombyeidae, and others too 

 numerous to mention, may often be seen " floating 

 amid the liquid noon," associated with the multitude 

 of other tribes wilich the sunshine awakes to active 

 * Int. to Entom. iii. p. 279. 



