CHAPTER XI 



THE GREAT PEACOCK 



IP WAS a memorable evening. I shall call 

 it the Great Peacock evening. Who does 

 not know the magnificent Moth, the largest 

 in Europe, clad in maroon velvet with a 

 necktie of white fur? The wings, with their 

 sprinkling of grey and brown, crossed by a 

 faint zig-zag and edged with smoky white, 

 have in the centre a round patch, a great eye 

 with a black pupil and a variegated iris con- 

 taining successive black, white, chestnut and 

 purple arcs. 



No less remarkable is the caterpillar, in 

 colour an undecided yellow. On the top of 

 thinly-scattered tubercles, crowned with a 

 palisade of black hairs, are set beads of tur- 

 quoise blue. His stout brown cocoon, so curi- 

 ous with its exit-shaft shaped like an eel-trap, 

 is usually fastened to the bark at the base of 

 old almond-trees. The caterpillar feeds on 

 the leaves of the same tree. 



Well, on the morning of the 6th of May, 

 a female emerges from her cocoon in my 

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