So these moths emerge and deposit their eggs in the swamps, forests, beside the river and wherever the trees on which they feed grow.  When the serious business of life is over, attracted by strong lights, they go with other pleasure seeking company, and grace society by their royal presence.

I could have had half a dozen fine Imperialis moths during the three nights of the carnival, and fluttering above buildings many more could be seen that did not descend to our reach.  Raymond had such a busy time capturing moths he missed most of the joys of the carnival, but I truly think he liked the chase better.  One he brought me, a female, was so especially large that I took her to the Cabin to be measured, and found her to be six and three quarter inches, and of the lightest yellow of any specimen I have seen.  Her wings were quite ragged.  I imagined she had finished laying her eggs, and was nearing the end of life, hence she was not so brilliant as a newly emerged specimen.  The moth proved this theory correct by soon going out naturally.

Choice could be made in all that plethora, and a male and female of most perfect colouring and markings were selected, for my studies of a pair.  One male was mounted and a very large female on account of her size.  That completed my Imperialis records from eggs to caterpillars, pupae and moths.

The necessity for a book on this subject; made simple to the understanding, and attractive to the eye of the masses, never was so deeply impressed upon me as in an experience with Imperialis.  Molly-Cotton was attending a house-party, and her host had chartered a pavilion at a city park for a summer night dance.  At the close of one of the numbers; over the heads of the laughing crowd, there swept toward the light a large yellow moth.

With one dexterous sweep the host caught it, and while the dancers crowded around him with exclamations of wonder and delight, he presented it to Molly-Cotton and asked, “Do you know what it is?”

She laughingly answered, “Yes.  But you don’t!”

" Guilty!” he responded.  “Name it.”

For one fleeting instant Molly-Cotton measured the company.  There was no one present who was not the graduate of a commissioned high school.  There were girls who were students at The Castle, Smith, Vassar, and Bryn Mawr.  The host was a Cornell junior, and there were men from Harvard and Yale.

“It is an Eacles Imperialis Io Polyphemus Cecropia Regalis,” she said.  Then in breathless suspense she waited.

“Shades of Homer!” cried the host.  “Where did you learn it?”

“They are flying all through the Cabin at home,” she replied.  “There was a tumbler turned over their eggs on the dining-room floor, and you dared not sit on the right side of the library window seat because of them when I left.”

“What do you want with their eggs?” asked a girl.

“Want to hatch their caterpillars, and raise them until they transform into these moths,” answered poor Molly-Cotton, who had been taught to fear so few living things that at the age of four she had carried a garter snake into the house for a playmate.