Qtieen of American Silk-Spinners. 125 



necessary leaves for a basis cannot be obtained, as occurs in 

 captivity, the inconvenience is overcome, but not without 

 difficulty. Leaves, you must know, are in Luna's way of 

 thinking, as essential to cocoon-building as wooden or iron 

 beams and girders to man's own constructing. Without a 

 framework of some sort, what a sorry attempt would we 

 make at home-building, but Luna does succeed, after a good 

 deal of wise planning and no little worry, in producing a 

 house which is well worthy her effort. 



While the gaudy moth or butterfly, when contrasted in 

 wisdom and sense with the dingy-colored bee, may suffer in 

 comparison, yet she is by no means the dull, stupid creature 

 she is pictured to be. She lives, it is a fact, as has often been 

 said, for the increase of her race, but the interest she shows 

 for the young she may never see, in laying her eggs upon the 

 plant that is to serve them as food and home, puts her upon 

 a rather high plane of intelligent existence. Luna's life, in 

 the perfect state, is usually quite brief. It is one of the 

 happiest of honeymoons. Love conquers and destroys all 

 other passions of her being, while her gormandizing off- 

 spring are never troubled by the ardent flame which consumes 

 even the thought of sipping the nectar of the flowers that 

 rival in beauty the wings of the mother, who is the per- 

 fect representation and embodiment of elegance and grace. 

 While the early insect lives and eats, the adult form, upon 

 whom Dame Nature has expended so much wealth of color 

 and such symmetry of shape, which make her a " thing of 

 beauty and a joy forever," lives and dies, for in her seeming 

 haste and forgetfulness the great mother of us all has made 

 her without the essential means of tasting food, a delight 

 and an enjoyment which the lords of creation are so wont 

 to esteem the purpose and aim of all human existence. 



