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 
