218 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
pleasant talk about these shy, beautiful and (to 
us) harmless creatures. I am speaking of adders 
now; I had not yet heard of his predilection for 
the great moth; when he spoke of this second 
favourite I begged him to show me a specimen or 
two. Turning to his wife, who was present and 
shared his queer tastes, he told her to go and get 
me some. She left the room, and returned by and 
by with a large cardboard box, such as milliners 
and dressmakers use; removing the lid, she raised 
it above my head and emptied the contents over 
me—a shower of living, shivering, fluttering, 
squeaking or creaking death’s-head moths! In a 
moment they were all over me, from my head 
right down to my feet, not attempting to fly, but 
running, quivering, and shaking their wings, so that 
I had a bath and feast of them. 
At that moment it mattered not that I was a 
stranger there, in the library or study of a country 
house, with those two looking on and laughing at 
my plight. It is what we feel that matters: I 
might have been standing in some wilderness never 
trodden by human foot, myself an unhuman solitary, 
and merely by willing it I had drawn those beautiful 
beings of the dark to me, charming them as with 
a flowery fragrance from their secret hiding-places 
in a dim world of leaves to gather upon and cover 
me over with their downy, trembling, mottled grey 
and rich yellow velvet wings. 
Even this fascinating experience did not wholly 
satisfy me: nothing, I said, would satisfy me short 
