purple have assumed a richer hue and blaze like a coronet of rubies. When at rest, with the rings all bunched and body shortened, the infantile Luna is as thick as a man's thumb, measuring but two inches in linear direction; but when she sets out upon her travels, feeling the dignity of her station in life, she stretches to her full length of three inches.

When have been completed her allotted days of feeding upon the leaves of the hickory, oak, walnut or sweet gum, and she is seriously contemplating the preparing of a shroud and casket in which to await her resurrection-morn, she casts about for leaves, which, when they are found, she securely draws together, and within the hollow space there is soon spun a very close and strong oval cocoon of silk, one and three-fourths inches in length, of chestnut-brown color, thin, and covered with warts and excrescences, but seldom showing the imprints of leaves. Cocoons of Luna so nearly resemble those of polyphemus, that many an experienced collector is greatly chagrined, after getting together a large supply of what he deems Luna cocoons, to find dusky, one-eyed polyphemi to issue from the silken tombs rather than a goodly throng, in delicate bridal attire, of proud empresses of the night. Polyphemus cocoons are, however, somewhat smaller than Lunas, white or dirty-white in color, rounded at each end, and sometimes angular, because of the leaves being unevenly moulded into their surfaces, and generally covered with a whitish meal-like powder.

In June the Lunas awake from their death-like slumber, burst asunder their silken cerements, having at first made loose the compact threads by a fluid-ejection, and come out into the world in all the freshness and glory of a new and untried existence. Their wings, which expand from four and three-fourths to five and one-half inches, are of a delicate light-green color, the hinder ones being prolonged into a tail of an inch and a half or more in length. Along the anterior margin of the fore-wings is a broad purple-brown stripe,

extending also across the back, and sending downwards a little branch to a glittering eye-like spot near the middle of the wing. These eyes, of which there is one on each wing, are transparent in the centre, and encircled by white, yellow, blue and black rings. The hinder borders are more or less

edged with purple-brown. All the nervures are very distinct, and pale-brown in color. Near the body the wings are thickly invested with long white hairs. The under sides, excepting that an indistinct line runs along the margin of both wings, are like to the upper. As for the body, the

thorax is white, occasionally yellowish or greenish, and coursed by the purple-brown stripe that traverses the entire length of the upper edge of the wings; and the abdomen, similarly colored, and clothed with white, wool-like hairs. The head is small and white, and furnished with broad, flat and strongly pectinated antennæ, which are very much wider in the male. The legs are purple-brown, and poorly adapted for walking, but this defect is largely compensated for in the wide stretch of wings, that fit their possessor for powerful and long-sustained flight.

Such is Luna in her various transformations. Notwithstanding her great size and almost matchless loveliness, her habits are not proportionally noteworthy. The gift of superior beauty, in the insect as in the mammalian world, does not often carry with it a high order of intelligence. It is true the young Luna knows pretty well the secret of dissembling. How quickly she perceives the approach of an enemy! And she knows how to deal with him, but her little trick of simulating death, or an immobile twig, does not always succeed with the wily spider, or artful ichneumon. That she is a tolerably good connoisseur of the character of foods, there can be no question. You cannot deceive her. Take from her the foods her ancestors have used for centuries untold, and substitute others she knows nothing about, and she is at once cognizant of the change. However hungry she may be, and in her early growing years she is ever a voracious feeder, she will starve rather than eat what the unwritten law of her race has strictly interdicted. I have known cases where death has ensued, or the caterpillar has pupated earlier than usual, when alien food has been given it to eat. But in the beginning of life, just after the first skin-moulting has been effected, ere the little creature has attained its seventh day of age, no trouble is experienced in changing the food, almost anything edible in the plant-line being eaten, though some things with a more decided relish than others. In the matter of cocoon-weaving, where the

necessary leaves for a basis cannot be obtained, as occurs in captivity, the inconvenience is overcome, but not without difficulty. Leaves, you must know, are in Luna's way of thinking, as essential to cocoon-building as wooden or iron beams and girders to man's own constructing. Without a framework of some sort, what a sorry attempt would we make at home-building, but Luna does succeed, after a good deal of wise planning and no little worry, in producing a house which is well worthy her effort.

While the gaudy moth or butterfly, when contrasted in wisdom and sense with the dingy-colored bee, may suffer in comparison, yet she is by no means the dull, stupid creature she is pictured to be. She lives, it is a fact, as has often been said, for the increase of her race, but the interest she shows for the young she may never see, in laying her eggs upon the plant that is to serve them as food and home, puts her upon a rather high plane of intelligent existence. Luna's life, in the perfect state, is usually quite brief. It is one of the happiest of honeymoons. Love conquers and destroys all other passions of her being, while her gormandizing offspring are never troubled by the ardent flame which consumes even the thought of sipping the nectar of the flowers that rival in beauty the wings of the mother, who is the perfect representation and embodiment of elegance and grace. While the early insect lives and eats, the adult form, upon whom Dame Nature has expended so much wealth of color and such symmetry of shape, which make her a "thing of beauty and a joy forever," lives and dies, for in her seeming haste and forgetfulness the great mother of us all has made her without the essential means of tasting food, a delight and an enjoyment which the lords of creation are so wont to esteem the purpose and aim of all human existence.

BASKET-CARRIERS.

OU who have been to the country, in the summer, and

who have kept your eyes alive to the surroundings, have doubtless seen the Basket-worm feeding upon the leaves of the quince, apple, peach, linden, and other deciduous trees, as well as upon such evergreen as the arbor-vitæ, Norway spruce, and red cedar. In Germany these worms. are popularly designated Sack-träger, or Sack-bearer, while the mature insect is spoken of as the House-builder Moth. Scientifically speaking, the latter is called Thyridopteryx ephemeraformis, a name which is nearly twice the length of the caterpillar it represents.

During the winter the curious weather-beaten bags of these worms may be observed hanging from the treebranches, apparently without a trace of the odd-looking creatures that hung them there the autumn before. If a number of these bags are gathered and cut open at this time, many of them will be discovered to be empty, but the greater portion will be found partly full of yellow eggs. Those which do not contain eggs are male bags, and the empty chrysalis of the male will be found protruding from the lower extremity. Upon close examination these eggs will be observed to be obovate in form, soft and opaque, about onetwentieth of an inch in length, and surrounded by more or less fawn-colored silky down. If left to themselves, they hatch sometime in May, or early in June.

The young which come from these eggs are of a brown color, very active in their movements, and begin at once to make for themselves coverings of silk, to which they fasten