102 MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES. 
movements of the males, who seem to scent them out, fluttering near 
the spot where the female rests concealed on a scrub-oak. 
Next in order comes the group of moths called Attac7, which 
includes many of the largest silk-producing species. 
Attacus cecropia is our largest native silk-spinning insect, and 
easily holds its place among the giant lepidoptera of the world. 
Specimens are occasionally taken six and one-half or even seven 
inches from tip to tip of their extended wings; and were it not so 
common, it would be much higher prized by collectors. When fresh 
from the cocoon, its wings (still soft, but fully expanded) have the 
appearance of being a part of some rich and heavy fabric, and a gentle- 
man with whom I am acquainted having interests in a woollen mill, 
remarked, on seeing one of these grand moths for the first time, 
“Now if I could manufacture a piece of goods like that, I think it 
would sell.” The subdued colors and the delicately traced patterns 
of many of the moths would, if imitated in fabrics, give greater 
variety and more artistic effects to the materials used for our adorn- 
ment and comfort. The female cecropia moth, the bulk of whose 
enormous body is composed almost wholly of eggs (two or three 
hundred in number), lays them singly or at the most two or three 
together on the under side of the leaves of the food plant. These 
egos are circular in shape, slightly flattened above and below, and 
55 
Larva of Attacus cecropia, 
are creamy-white in color. The young caterpillars make their appear- 
ance in ten or twelve days and are at first dark brown or black, 
covered with minute tubercles and stout black spines. At each 
moult they change in color, and when three-quarters of an inch long 
are orange or deep yellow studded with black tubercles and spines. 
The insect assumes a greenish and finally a beautiful bluish-green 
color as it matures, eventually reaching a length of three or four 
inches and a thickness of one’s thumb. It is then an imposing-look- 
