I walked down the hall, and vaguely scanned the solid rows of books and specimens lining the library walls.  I scarcely realized the thought that was in my mind, but what I was looking for was not there.  The dining-room then, with panelled walls and curtains of tapestry?  It was not there!  Straight to the white and gold music room I went.  Then a realizing sense came to me.  It was Brussels lace for which I was searching!  On the most delicate, snowiest place possible, on the finest curtain there, I placed my Cecropia, and then stepped back and gazed at it with a sort of “Touch it over my dead body” sentiment in my heart.  An effort was required to arouse myself, to realize that I was not dreaming.  To search the fields and woods for twenty years, and then find the specimen I had sought awaiting me at my own door!  Well might it have been a dream, but that the Cecropia, clinging to the meshes of the lace, slowly opening and closing its wings to strengthen them for flight, could be nothing but a delightful reality.

A few days later, in the valley of the Wood Robin, while searching for its nest I found a large cocoon.  It was above my head, but afterward I secured it by means of a ladder, and carried it home.  Shortly there emerged a yet larger Cecropia, and luck seemed with me.  I could find them everywhere through June, the time of their emergence, later their eggs, and the tiny caterpillars that hatched from them.  During the summer I found these caterpillars, in different stages of growth, until fall, when after their last moult and casting of skin, they reached the final period of feeding; some were over four inches in length, a beautiful shade of greenish blue, with red and yellow warty projections—­tubercles, according to scientific works.

It is easy to find the cocoons these caterpillars spin, because they are the largest woven by any moth, and placed in such a variety of accessible spots.  They can be found in orchards, high on branches, and on water sprouts at the base of trees.  Frequently they are spun on swamp willows, box-elder, maple, or wild cherry.  Mr. Black once found for me the largest cocoon I ever have seen; a pale tan colour with silvery lights, woven against the inside of a hollow log.  Perhaps the most beautiful of all, a dull red, was found under the flooring of an old bridge crossing a stream in the heart of the swamp, by a girl not unknown to fiction, who brought it to me.  In a deserted orchard close the Wabash, Raymond once found a pair of empty cocoons at the foot of a big apple tree, fastened to the same twigs, and within two inches of each other.

But the most wonderful thing of all occurred when Wallace Hardison, a faithful friend to my work, sawed a board from the roof of his chicken house and carried to me twin Cecropia cocoons, spun so closely together they were touching, and slightly interwoven.  By the closest examination I could discover slight difference between them.  The one on the right was a trifle fuller in the body, wider at the top, a shade lighter in colour, and the inner case seemed heavier.