One learns almost as much by his mistakes as he profits by his successes in this world.  Writing of this piece of stupidity, at a time in my work with moths when a little thought would have taught me better, reminds me of an experience I had with a caterpillar, the first one I ever carried home and tried to feed.  I had an order to fill for some swamp pictures, and was working almost waist deep in a pool in the Limberlost, when on a wild grape-vine swinging close to my face, I noticed a big caterpillar placidly eating his way around a grape leaf.  The caterpillar was over four inches long, had no horn, and was of a clear red wine colour, that was beautiful in the sunlight.  I never before had seen a moth caterpillar that was red and I decided it must be rare.  As there was a wild grapevine growing over the east side of the Cabin, and another on the windmill, food of the right kind would be plentiful, so I instantly decided to take the caterpillar home.  It was of the specimens that I consider have almost `thrust themselves upon me.’

When the pictures were finished and my camera carried from the swamp, I returned with the clippers and cut off vine and caterpillar, to carry with me.  On arrival I placed it in a large box with sand on the bottom, and every few hours took out the wilted leaves, put in fresh ones, and sprinkled them to insure crispness, and to give a touch of moisture to the atmosphere in the box, that would make it seem more like the swamp.

My specimen was readily identified as Philampelus Pandorus, of which I had no moth, so I took extra care of it in the hope of a new picture in the spring.  It had a little flat head that could be drawn inside the body like a turtle, and on the sides were oblique touches of salmon.  Something that appeared to be a place for a horn could be seen, and a yellow tubercle was surrounded by a black line.  It ate for three days, and then began racing so frantically around the box, I thought confinement must be harmful, so I gave it the freedom of the Cabin, warning all my family to `look well to their footsteps.’  It stopped travelling after a day or two at a screen covering the music-room window, and there I found it one morning lying still, a shrivelled, shrunken thing; only half the former length, so it was carefully picked up, and thrown away!

Of course the caterpillar was in the process of changing into the pupa, and if I had known enough to lay it on the sand in my box, and wait a few days, without doubt a fine pupa would have emerged from that shrunken skin, from which, in the spring, I could have secured an exquisite moth, with shades of olive green, flushed with pink.  The thought of it makes me want to hide my head.  It was six years before I found a living moth, or saw another caterpillar of that species.

A few days later, while watching with a camera focused on the nest of a blackbird in Mrs. Corson’s woods east of town, Raymond, who was assisting me, crept to my side and asked if it would do any harm for him to go specimen hunting.  The long waits with set cameras were extremely tedious to the restless spirits of the boy, and the birds were quite tame, the light was under a cloud, and the woods were so deep that after he had gone a few rods he was from sight, and under cover; besides it was great hunting ground, so I gladly told him to go.