MOTHS OF THE LIMBERLOST 



found the porch, orchard, and night-sky aUve with 

 Cecropias holding high carnival. I had not supposed 

 there were so many in all this world. From every direction 

 they came floating like birds down the moonbeams. I 

 carefully removed the female from the door to a window 

 close beside, and stepped on the porch. No doubt I 

 was permeated with the odour of the moth. As I ad- 

 vanced to the top step, that lay even with the middle 

 branches of the apple trees, the exquisite big creatures 

 came swarming around me. I could feel them on my hair, 

 my shoulders, and see them settling on my gown and 

 outstretched hands. Far as I could penetrate the night- 

 sky more were coming. They settled on the bloom- 

 laden branches, on the porch pillars, on me indiscrimi- 

 nately. I stepped inside the door with one on each 

 hand and five clinging to my gown. This experience, I 

 am sure, suggested Mrs. Comstock's moth hunting in 

 the Limberlost. Then I went back to the veranda and 

 revelled with the moths until dawn drove them to 

 shelter. One magnificent specimen, birdlike above all 

 the others, I followed across the orchard and yard 

 to a grape arbour, where I picked him from the 

 under side of a leaf after he had settled for the coming 

 day. Repeatedly I counted close to a hundred, and then 

 they would so confuse me by flight I could not be sure I 

 was not numbering the same one twice. With eight 

 males, some of them fine large moths, one superb, from 



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