I was far afield as to names, but in later years with only a glance at any specimen I could say, “Oh, yes!  I always have known that.  It has buff-coloured legs, clubbed antennae with buff tips, wings of purplish brown velvet with escalloped margins, a deep band of buff lightly traced with black bordering them, and a pronounced point close the apex of the front pair.  When it came to books, all they had to teach me were the names.  I had captured and studied butterflies, big, little, and with every conceivable variety of marking, until it was seldom one was found whose least peculiarity was not familiar to me as my own face; but what could this be?

It clung to the rough bark, slowly opening and closing large wings of grey velvet down, margined with bands made of shades of grey, tan, and black; banded with a broad stripe of red terra cotta colour with an inside margin of white, widest on the back pair.  Both pairs of wings were decorated with half-moons of white, outlined in black and strongly flushed with terra cotta; the front pair near the outer margin had oval markings of blue-black, shaded with grey, outlined with half circles of white, and secondary circles of black.  When the wings were raised I could see a face of terra cotta, with small eyes, a broad band of white across the forehead, and an abdomen of terra cotta banded with snowy white above, and spotted with white beneath.  Its legs were hairy, and the antennae antlered like small branching ferns.  Of course I thought it was a butterfly, and for a time was too filled with wonder to move.  Then creeping close, the next time the wings were raised above its body, with the nerveless touch of a robust child I captured it.

I was ten miles from home, but I had spent all my life until the last year on that farm, and I knew and loved every foot of it.  To leave it for a city home and the confinement of school almost had broken my heart, but it really was time for me to be having some formal education.  It had been the greatest possible treat to be allowed to return to the country for a week, but now my one idea was to go home with my treasure.  None of my people had seen a sight like that.  If they had, they would have told me.

Borrowing a two-gallon stone jar from the tenant’s wife, I searched the garden for flowers sufficiently rare for lining.  Nothing so pleased me as some gorgeous deep red peony blooms.  Never having been allowed to break the flowers when that was my mother’s home, I did not think of doing it because she was not there to know.  I knelt and gathered all the fallen petals that were fresh, and then spreading my apron on the ground, jarred the plant, not harder than a light wind might, and all that fell in this manner it seemed right to take.  The selection was very pleasing, for the yellow glaze of the jar, the rich red of the petals, and the grey velvet of my prize made a picture over which I stood trembling in delight.  The moth was promptly christened the Half-luna, because my father had taught me that luna was the moon, and the half moons on the wings were its most prominent markings.