All winter those cocoons occupied the place of state in my collection.  Every few days I tried them to see if they gave the solid thump indicating healthy pupae, and listened to learn if they were moving.  By May they were under constant surveillance.  On the fourteenth I was called from home a few hours to attend the funeral of a friend.  I think nothing short of a funeral would have taken me, for the moth from a single cocoon had emerged on the eleventh.  I hurried home near noon, only to find that I was late, for one was out, and the top of the other cocoon heaving with the movements of the second.

The moth that had escaped was a male.  It clung to the side of the board, wings limp, its abdomen damp.  The opening from which it came was so covered with terra cotta coloured down that I thought at first it must have disfigured itself; but full development proved it could spare that much and yet appear all right.

In the fall I had driven a nail through one corner of the board, and tacked it against the south side of the Cabin, where I made reproductions of the cocoons.  The nail had been left, and now it suggested the same place.  A light stroke on the head of the nail, covered with cloth to prevent jarring, fastened the board on a log.  Never in all my life did I hurry as on that day, and I called my entire family into service.  The Deacon stood at one elbow, Molly-Cotton at the other, and the gardener in the rear.  There was not a second to be lost, and no time for an unnecessary movement; for in the heat and bright sunshine those moths would emerge and develop with amazing rapidity.

Molly-Cotton held an umbrella over them to prevent this as much as possible; the Deacon handed plate holders, and Brenner ran errands.  Working as fast as I could make my fingers fly in setting up the camera, and getting a focus, the second moth’s head was out, its front feet struggling to pull up the body; and its antennae beginning to lift, when I was ready for the first snap at half-past eleven.

By the time I inserted the slide, turned the plate holder and removed another slide, the first moth to appear had climbed up the board a few steps, and the second was halfway out.  Its antennae were nearly horizontal now, and from its position I decided that the wings as they lay in the pupa case were folded neither to the back nor to the front, but pressed against the body in a lengthwise crumpled mass, the heavy front rib, or costa, on top.

Again I changed plates with all speed.  By the time I was ready for the third snap the male had reached the top of the board, its wings opened for the first time, and began a queer trembling motion.  The second one had emerged and was running into the first, so I held my finger in the line of its advance, and when it climbed on I lowered it to the edge to the board beside the cocoons.  It immediately clung to the wood.  The big pursy abdomen and smaller antennae, that now turned forward in position, proved this a female.  The exposure was made not ten seconds after she cleared the case, and with her back to the lens, so the position and condition of the wings and antennae on emergence can be seen clearly.