both outspread wings, on some, slightly resembled a sugar maple leaf, and on others, the perfect profile of a face.  There was a small oblong figure of pinkish white where the eye would fall, and the field of each space was brownish red velvet.  From this to the clay-coloured band with its paler brown markings and lines, the pink and white scales sprinkled the brown ground; most of the pink, around the marking, more of the white, in the middle of the space; so few of either, that it appeared to be brown where the clay border joined.

The antennae were shaped as all of the Attacus group, but larger in proportion to size, for my biggest Promethea measured only four and a quarter from tip to tip, and for his inches carried larger antlers than any Cecropia I ever saw of this measurement, those of the male being very much larger than the female.  In colour they were similar to the darkest part of the wings, as were the back of the head, thorax and abdomen.  The hair on the back of the thorax was very long.  The face wore a pink flush over brown, the eyes bright brown, the under thorax covered with long pinkish brown hairs, and the legs the same.  A white stripe ran down each side of the abdomen, touched with a dot of brownish red wine colour on the rings.  The under part was pinkish wine crossed with a narrow white line at each segment.  The claspers were prominent and sharp.  The finishing touch of the exquisite creatign lay in the fact that in motion, in strong light the red wine shadings of the under side cast an intangible, elusive, rosy flush over the dark back of the moth that was the mast delicate and loveliest colour effect I ever have seen on marking of flower, bird, or animal.

For the first time in all my experience with moths the female was less than the male.

Even the eggs of this mated pair carried a pinkish white shade and were stained with brown.  They were ovoid in shape and dotted the screen door in rows.  The tiny caterpillars were out eleven days later and proved to be of the kind that march independently from their shells without stopping to feed on them.  Of every food offered, the youngsters seemed to prefer lilac leaves; I remembered that they had passed the winter wrapped in these, dangling from their twigs, and that the under wings of the male and much of the female bore a flushing of colour that was lilac, for what else is red wine veiled with white?  So I promptly christened them, `The Pride of the Lilacs.’  They were said to eat ash, apple pear, willow, plum, cherry, poplar and many other leaves, but mine liked lilac, and there was a supply in reach of the door, so they undoubtedly were lilac caterpillars, for they had nothing else to eat.