At this time, as I remember, Cecropia eggs were the largest I had seen, but these were larger; the same shape and of a white colour with a brown band.  The moth dotted them on the under and upper sides of leaves, on sashes and flower pots, tubs and buckets.  They turned brown as the days passed.  The little caterpillars that emerged from them were reddish brown, and a quarter of an inch long.

I could not see my way to release a small army of two or three hundred of these among my plants, so when they emerged I held a leaf before fifty, that seemed liveliest, and transferred them to a big box.  The remainder I placed with less ceremony, over mulberry, elm, maple, wild cherry, grape, rose, apple, and pear, around the Cabin, and gave the ones kept in confinement the same diet.

The leaves given them always were dipped in water to keep them fresh longer, and furnish moisture for the feeders.  They grew by a series of moults, like all the others I had raised or seen, and were full size in forty-eight days, but travelled a day or two before beginning the pupa stage of their existence.  The caterpillars were big fellows; the segments deeply cut; the bodies yellow-green, with a few sparse scattering hairs, and on the edge of each segment, from a triple row of dots arose a tiny, sharp spine.  Each side had series of black touches and the head could be drawn inside the thorax.  They were the largest in circumference of any I had raised, but only a little over three inches long.

I arranged both leaves and twigs in the boxes, but they spun among the leaves,and not dangling from twigs, as all the cocoons I had found outdoors were placed previous to that time.  Since, I have found them spun lengthwise of twigs in a brush heap.  The cocoons of these I had raised were whiter than those of the free caterpillars, and did not have the leaves fastened on the outside, but were woven in a nest of leaves, fastened together by threads.

Polyphemus moths are night flyers, and do not feed.  I have tried to tell how beautiful they are, with indifferent success, and they are common with me.  Since I learned them, find their cocoons easiest to discover.  Through the fall and winter, when riding on trains, I see them dangling from wayside thorn bushes.  Once, while taking a walk with Raymond in late November, he located one on a thorn tree in a field beside the road, but he has the eyes of an Indian.

These are the moths that city people can cultivate, for in Indianapolis, in early December, I saw fully one half as many Polyphemus cocoons on the trees as there were Cecropia, and I could have gathered a bushel of them.  They have emerged in perfection for me always, with one exception.  Personally, I have found more Polyphemus than Cecropia.

These moths are the gamins of their family, and love the streets and lights at night.

Under an arc light at Wabash, Indiana, I once picked up as beautiful a specimen of Polyphemus as I ever saw, and the following day a friend told me that several had been captured the night before in the heart of town.