INTRODUCTION. 
99 
the empty cocoon presents jast the same appearance 
as one still inhabited. Rosel relates, noth amusing 
naivete, how this circumstance puzzled him the first 
time he ivitnessed it ; he could scarcely help think- 
ing that there was something supernatural in the 
appearance of one of these fine moths in a box in 
which he had put a cocoon of this kind, but in 
■which he could not discover the slightest appearance 
of any insect having escaped from it, until he slit it 
longitudinally. But from an observation of Meinec- 
ken, it appears that these converging threads serve 
a double purpose ; being necessary to compress the 
abdomen of the moth as it emerges from the cocoon, 
which forces the fluid to enter the nervures of the 
wings, and give them their proper expansion. For 
he found, that when the pupa is taken out of the 
cocoon, the moth is disclosed at the proper time, 
but remains always crippled in its wings, which 
never expand properly, unless the abdomen be com- 
pressed with the finger and thumb, so as to imitate 
the natural operation*.” 
Although moths may be characteristically said 
to be nocturnal insects, it must not be understood 
that their appearance "is exclusively confined to the 
night, or even the twilight. The Gamma-moth, the 
majority of the male Bombycldie, and others too 
numerous to mention, may often be seen “ floating 
amid the liquid noon,” associated with the multitude 
of other tribes which the sunshine awakes to active 
* Int. to Entom. iii. p. 279. 
