HOW TO FIND THE CONSTELLATIONS. 
63 
to its friends as Hemileuca maia comes forth for a two weeks’ 
existence. Its black, crape-like wings with the broad white 
band across each make it a dainty fall visitor that I always look 
forward to with eager expectancy and hail with pleasure. Most 
of our lepidopterous visitors have disappeared and, excepting 
the few that will live till spring, those that are about are old and 
faded. It is then that the little Maia flutters about over our 
meadows with its peculiar flight and adds a beauty of its own to 
the autumn landscape. 
It is rarely found far from the lowlands where the females 
will deposit their eggs and unlike most of its near relatives is a 
day flier. About ten o’clock in the foornoon it wakes up and 
begins it daily duties. By three in the afternoon its duties are 
done. It has worked hard to carry about its heavy body and 
retires early. On leaf or twig or arching grass blade it alights, 
folds its wings over its woolly body and sleeps the sleep of the 
innocent. 
By the first of October the mating season is over, the females 
consult their botanies, select the most desirable specimens of 
Spiraea salicifolia and on the stems deposit a few dozen links 
in their endless chain that would soon devastate our meadows 
were not death ofttimes more certain than the weather. 
How to Find the Constellations. III. 
' BY GEORGE I. HOPKINS. 
Since the September moon reaches the first quarter on the 
second day it will probably interfere somewhat with our obser¬ 
vations, particularly in making out the stars of lesser magnitude. 
Let the observer face the south, this time about eight o’clock 
some evening during the first week of September, and he can¬ 
not fail to notice a brilliant white star in the southwest at an 
altitude of about thirty or thirty-five degrees. This is the 
planet Jupiter already referred to in a previous article, and 
which the observer has doubtless kept track of during the last 
