Pass after pass I made at them, but they always dived and escaped me.  At last, when I almost had given up the chase, one went nearly from sight in a trumpet creeper.  With a sweep the flower was closed behind it, and I ran into the house crying that at last I had caught a Lady Bird.  Holding carefully, the trumpet was cut open with a pin, and although the moth must have been slightly pinched, and lacking in down when released, I clung to it until my mother and every doubting member of my family was convinced that this was no bird at all, for it lacked beak, tail, and feathers, while it had six legs and four wings.  Father was delighted that I had learned something new, all by myself; but I really think it slightly provoked my mother when thereafter I always refused to call it a bird.  This certainly was reprehensible.  She should have known all the time that it was a moth.

The other day a club woman of Chicago who never in her life has considered money, who always has had unlimited opportunities for culture both in America and Europe, who speaks half a dozen languages, and has the care of but one child, came in her auto mobile to investigate the Limberlost.  Almost her first demand was to see pictures.  One bird study I handed her was of a brooding king rail, over a foot tall, with a three-foot wing sweep, and a long curved bill.  She cried, “Oh! see the dear little hummingbird!”

If a woman of unlimited opportunity, in this day of the world, does not know a rail from a humming-bird, what could you expect of my little mother, who spoke only two languages, reared twelve lusty children, and never saw an ocean.

So by degrees the Lady Bird of the garden resolved itself into Deilephila Lineata.  Deile—­evening; phila—­lover; lineata—­lined; the Lined Evening Lover.  Why ‘evening’ is difficult to understand, for all my life this moth occurs more frequently with me in the fore and early afternoon than in the evening.  So I agree with those entomologists who call it the ‘white-lined morning-sphinx.’  It is lovely in modest garb, delicately lined, but exceedingly rich in colour.  It has the long slender wings of the Sphingid moths, and in grace and tirelessness of flight resembles Celeus, the swallow of the moth family.

Its head is very small, and its thorax large.  The eyes are big, and appear bigger because set in so tiny a head.  Under its tongue, which is a full inch long, is a small white spot that divides, spreads across each eye, and runs over the back until even with the bases of the front wings.  The top of the head and shoulders are olive brown, decorated with one long white line dividing it in the middle, and a shorter on each side.  The abdomen is a pale brown, has a straight line running down the middle of the back, made up of small broken squares of very dark brown, touched with a tiny mark of white.  Down each side of this small line extends a larger one, wider at the top and tapering, and this is composed of squares of blackish brown alternating with white, the brown being twice the size of the white.  The sides of the abdomen are flushed with beautiful rosy pink, and beneath it is tan colour.