it was not probable that I would risk crushing a butterfly to tie a bonnet on my head.  It probably would be down my back half the time anyway.  It usually was.  As we neared the city I heard the farmer’s wife tell him that he must take me to my home.  He said he would not do any such a thing, but she said he must.  She explained that she knew me, and it would not be decent to put me down where they were going, and leave me to walk home and carry that heavy jar.  So the farmer took me to our gate.  I thanked him as politely as I knew how, and kissed his wife and the fat baby in payment for their kindness, for I was very grateful.  I was so tired I scarcely could set down the jar and straighten my cramped arms when I had the opportunity.  I had expected my family to be delighted over my treasure, but they exhibited an astonishing indifference, and were far more concerned over the state of my blistered face.  I would not hear of putting my Half-luna on the basement screen as they suggested, but enthroned it in state on the best lace curtains at a parlour window, covered the sill with leaves and flowers, and went to bed happy.  The following morning my sisters said a curtain was ruined, and when they removed it to attempt restoration, the general consensus of opinion seemed to be that something was a nuisance, I could not tell whether it was I, or the Half-luna.  On coming to the parlour a little later, ladened with leaves and flowers, my treasure was gone.  The cook was sure it had flown from the door over some one’s head, and she said very tersely that it was a burning shame, and if such carelessness as that ever occurred again she would quit her job.  Such is the confidence of a child that I accepted my loss as an inevitable accident, and tried to be brave to comfort her, although my heart was almost broken.  Of course they freed my moth.  They never would have dared but that the little mother’s couch stood all day empty now, and her chair unused beside it.  My disappointment was so deep and far-reaching it made me ill then they scolded me, and said I had half killed myself carrying that heavy jar in the hot sunshine, although the pain from which I suffered was neither in my arms nor sunburned face.

So I lost my first Cecropia, and from that day until a woman grown and much of this material secured, in all my field work among the birds, flowers, and animals, I never had seen another.  They had taunted me in museums, and been my envy in private collections, but find one, I could not.  When in my field work among the birds, so many moths of other families almost had thrust themselves upon me that I began a collection of reproductions of them, I found little difficulty in securing almost anything else.  I could picture Sphinx Moths in any position I chose, and Lunas seemed eager to pose for me.  A friend carried to me a beautiful tan-coloured Polyphemus with transparent moons like isinglass set in its