Quickly as possible I changed the plates again; the time that elapsed could not have been over half a minute.  The male was trying to creep up the wall, and the increase in the length and expansion of the female’s wings could be seen.  The colours on both were exquisite, but they grew a trifle less brilliant as the moths became dry.

Again I turned to the business of plate changing.  The heat was intense, and perspiration was streaming from my face.  I called to Molly-Cotton to shield the moths while I made the change.  “Drat the moths!” cried the Deacon.  “Shade your mother!” Being an obedient girl, she shifted the umbrella, and by the time I was ready for business, the male was on the logs and travelling up the side of the Cabin.  The female was climbing toward the logs also, so that a side view showed her wings already beginning to lift above her back.

I had only five snapshot plates in my holders, so I was compelled to stop.  It was as well, for surely the record was complete, and I was almost prostrate with excitement and heat.  Several days later I opened each of the cocoons and made interior studies.  The one on the right was split down the left side and turned back to shpw the bed of spun silk of exquisite colour that covers the inner case.  Some say this silk has no commercial value, as it is cut in lengths reaching from the top around the inner case and back to the top again; others think it can be used.  The one on the left was opened down the front of the outer case, the silk parted and the heavy inner case cut from top to bottom to show the smooth interior wall, the thin pupa case burst by the exit of the moth, and the cast caterpillar skin crowded at the bottom.

The pair mated that same night, and the female began laying eggs by noon the following day.  She dotted them in lines over the inside of her box, and on leaves placed in it, and at times piled them in a heap instead of placing them as do these moths in freedom.  Having taken a picture of a full-grown caterpillar of this moth brought to me by Mr. Andrew Idlewine, I now had a complete Cecropia history; eggs, full-grown caterpillars, twin cocoons, and the story of the emergence of the moths that wintered in them.  I do not suppose Mr. Hardison thought he was doing anything unusual when he brought me those cocoons, yet by bringing them, he made it possible for me to secure this series of twin Cecropia moths, male and female, a thing never before recorded by lepidopterist or photographer so far as I can learn.

The Cecropia is a moth whose acquaintance nature-loving city people can cultivate.  In December of 19o6, on a tree, maple I think, near No. 2230 North Delaware Street, Indianapolis, I found four cocoons of this moth, and on the next tree, save one, another.  Then I began watching, and in the coming days I counted them by the hundred through the city.  Several bushels of these cocoons could have been clipped in Indianapolis alone, and there is no reason why any other city that has maple, elm, catalpa, and other shade trees would not have as many; so that any one who would like can find them easily.