BEAUTIFUL HAWK-MOTHS 219 



of seeing the undomesticated moth living his proper 

 life in the open air. He smiled and shook his head. 

 Useless to look for such a thing ! He had never 

 seen it and didn't believe that I ever would ; he 

 couldn't say why. He got his moths by paying 

 sixpence apiece for the chrysalids to workmen in 

 the potato fields and rearing them himself; in 

 this way he obtained as many as he wanted sixty 

 or seventy or eighty every year. 



I can only hope that time will prove him wrong, 

 and I go on as before haunting the flowery places 

 in the last light of day and when the moon shines. 



Another surprisingly beautiful moth which, they 

 say, is as rarely seen as the Acherontia is the crimson 

 underwing. Once only have I been able to observe 

 this lovely moth flying about and it was in a 

 room ! I was staying with friends at the Anglers' 

 Inn at Bransbury on the Test when one evening 

 after the lamps were lit the moth appeared in our 

 sitting-room and remained two days and nights 

 with us in spite of our kind persecutions and artful 

 plans for his expulsion. It was early September, 

 with mild sunny days and misty or wet nights, and 

 in the evening, when the room was very warm, we 

 would throw the windows and doors open, thinking 

 of the delicious relief it would be for our prisoner 

 to pass out of that superheated atmosphere, that 

 painful brightness, into his own wide, wet world, 

 its darkness and silence and fragrance, and a 

 mysterious signal wafted to him from a distance 

 out of clouds of whispering leaves, from one there 



