The Life of the Caterpillar 



remarkable in size and costume would cert- 

 ainly not have escaped me had I met him. 



The little seeker whom I had caught so 

 nicely with a promise of the roundabout never 

 made a second find. For three years I re- 

 quisitioned friends and neighbours, especially 

 the youngsters, those sharp-eyed scrapers of 

 the brushwood; I myself scraped a great deal 

 under masses of dead leaves, inspected stone- 

 heaps, examined hollow tree-trunks. My 

 trouble was in vain : the precious cocoon was 

 nowhere to be found. Suffice it to say that 

 the Banded Monk is very scarce in my neigh- 

 bourhood. The importance of this detail will 

 be seen when the time comes. 



As I suspected, my solitary cocoon did be- 

 long to the famous Moth. On the 2Oth 

 of August there emerges a female, corpulent 

 and big-bellied, attired like the male, but in a 

 lighter frock, more in the nankeen style. I 

 establish her in a wire-gauze bell-jar in the 

 middle of my study, on the big laboratory- 

 table, littered with books, pots, trays, boxes, 

 test-tubes and other engines of science. I 

 have described the setting before: it is the 

 same as in the case of the Great Peacock. The 

 room is lighted by two windows looking out 

 282 



