There was another, a rug of pure silk, that never could have touched a floor, or been trusted outside a case, had it been my property, that beyond all question took its exquisite combinations of browns and tans with pink lines, and peacock blue designs from Polyphemus.  A third could have been copied from no moth save Modesta, for it was dove grey, mouse grey, and cinnamon brown, with the purplish pink of the back wings, and exactly the blue of their decorations.  Had this rug been woven of silk, as the brown one, that moment would have taught me why people sometimes steal when they cannot afford to buy.  Examination of the stock of any importer of high grade rugs will convince one who knows moths, that many of our commonest or their near relatives native to the Orient are really used as models for colour combinations in rug weaving.  The Herat frequently has moths in its border.

The Modest moth has a wing sweep in large females of from five and one-half to six inches.  In my territory they are very rare, only a few caterpillars and one moth have fallen to me.  This can be accounted for by the fact that the favourite food tree of the caterpillar is so scarce, for some reason having become almost extinct, except in a few cases where they are used for shade.

The eggs are a greyish green, and have the pearly appearance of almost all moth eggs.  On account of white granules, the caterpillar cannot fail to be identified.  The moths in their beautiful soft colouring are well worth search and study.  They are as exquisitely shaded as any, and of a richness difficult to describe.

CHAPTER XIV The Pride of the Lilacs:  Attacus Promethea

So far as the arrangement ofthe subjects of this book in family groupings is concerned, any chapter might come first or last.  It is frankly announced as the book of the Nature Lover, and as such is put together in the form that appears to me easiest to comprehend and most satisfying to examine.  I decided that it would be sufficient to explain the whole situation to the satisfaction of any one, if I began the book with a detailed history of moth, egg, caterpillar, and cocoon and then gave complete portrayal of each stage in the evolution of one cocoon and one pupa case moth.  I began with Cecropia, the commonest of all and one of the most beautiful for the spinners, and ended with Regalis, of earth—­and the rarest.

The luck I had in securing Regalis in such complete form seems to me the greatest that ever happened to any, worker in this field, and it reads more like a fairy tale than sober every-day fact, copiously illustrated with studies from life.  At its finish I said, “Now I am done.  This book is completed.”  Soon afterward, Raymond walked in with a bunch of lilac twigs in his hand from which depended three rolled leaves securely bound to their twigs by silk spinning.

“I don’t remember that we ever found any like these,” he said. `Would you be interested in them?’