BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS OF THE GREEN LANES. 169 



Romans, who seem to have tried every living thing 

 to find out whether or not it was good to eat, 

 considered the large, fat, and rank caterpillar of the 

 goat-moth quite a delicacy having a naturally 

 " high " flavour about it that we cannot at all 

 approach in our " game !" Pliny alludes to it, and 

 mentions how it was the custom to fatten the cater- 

 pillar on flour for some time before cooking. In 

 May, the larva forms a large, tough, oval cocoon, 

 composed of fragments of wood and spun silk, about 



Pupa of Goat-moth. 



two inches long. By-and-by this cracks, and the 

 moth emerges, generally in the after-part of the 

 day. It crawls out of the case and cocoon, and 

 waits a short time for its wings to expand and dry 

 a process of only a few minutes. Then is the 

 time for the young collector to secure it, in all its 

 undiminished beauty. 



Even more interesting than the goat-moth is 

 the economy of a still commoner species known 

 among entomologists as the Vapourer-moth (Orgyia 

 antiqua). The law of mimicry to which we have 

 already alluded is carried on so far that the females 



