22 THE LOG OF THE SUN 



inches across, will flap gracefully through the 

 summer twilight — weaves about himself a half 

 oval mound, along some stem or tree-trunk, and 

 becomes a mere excrescence — the veriest un- 

 edible thing a bird may spy. Polyphemus wraps 

 miles of finest silk about his green worm-form 

 (how, even though we watch him do it, we can only 

 guess) ; weaving in all the surrounding leaves he 

 can reach. This, of course, before the frosts come, 

 but when the leaves at last shrivel, loosen, and 

 their petioles break, it is merely a larger brown 

 nut than usual that falls to the ground, the kernel 

 of which will sprout next June and blossom into 

 the big moth of delicate fawn tints, feathery 

 horned, with those strange isinglass windows in 

 his hind wings. 



Luna — the weird, beautiful moon-moth, whose 

 pale green hues and long graceful streamers make 

 us realise how much beauty we miss if we neglect 

 the night life of summer — when clad in her 

 temporary shroud of silk, sometimes falls to the 

 ground, or again the cocoon remains in the tree 

 or bush where it was spun. 



But Prometheus, the smallest of the quartet, 

 has a way all his own. The elongated cocoon, 

 looking like a silken finger, is woven about a leaf 

 of sassafras. Even the long stem of the leaf is 

 silk-girdled, and a strong band is looped about the 

 twig to which the leaf is attached. Here, when 

 all the leaves fall, he hangs, the plaything of 





