Moths of the Limberlost Part 9

The front wings had the usual long, silky hairs. They were of olive-green shading into red, at the base, the costa was red, and an escalloped band of red bordered them. The intervening s.p.a.ce was transparent like thinnest isingla.s.s, and crossed with fine red veins. The back wings were the same, only the hairs at the base were lighter red, and the band at the edge deeper in colour.

The head of the male seemed sharper, the shoulders stronger olive, the wings more pointed at the apex, where the female's were a little rounded. The top of the abdomen had the middle band of such strong red that it threw the same colour over the bands above and below it; giving to the whole moth a strong red appearance when on wing. They, were so fascinating the birds were forgotten, and the hillside hunted for them until a pair were secured to carry home for identification, before the whistle of the cardinal from Rainbow Bottom rang so sharply that I remembered this was the day I had hoped to secure his likeness; and here I was allowing a little red-nosed moth so to thrust itself upon my attention, that my cameras were not even set up and focused on the sumac.

This tiny suns.h.i.+ne moth, Hemaris Thysbe, was easy of identification, and its whole life history before me on the hillside. I was too busy with the birds to raise many caterpillars, so reference to several books taught me that they all agreed on the main points of Hemaris history.

Hemaris means 'b.l.o.o.d.y nose.' 'b.l.o.o.d.y nose' on account of the red first noticed on the face, though some writers called them 'Clear wings,' because of the transparent s.p.a.ces on the wings.

Certainly 'clear wings' is a most appropriate and poetic name for this moth. Fastidious people will undoubtedly prefer it for common usage. For myself, I always think of the delicate, gaudy little creature, greedily thrusting its blood-red nose into the purple thistle blooms; so to my thought it returns as 'b.l.o.o.d.y nose.'

The pairs mate early after emerging, and lay about two hundred small eggs to the female, from which the caterpillars soon hatch, and begin their succession of moults. One writer gave black haw and s...o...b..ll as their favourite foods, and the length of the caterpillar when full grown nearly two inches. They are either a light brown with yellow markings, or green with yellow; all of them have white granules on the body, and a blue-black horn with a yellow base. They spin among the leaves on the ground, and the pupa, while small, is shaped like Regalis, except that it has a sharper point at each end, and more prominent wing s.h.i.+elds. It has no raised tongue case, although it belongs to the family of 'long tongues.'

On learning all I could acquire by experience with these moths, and what the books had to teach, I became their warm admirer. One sunny morning climbing the hill on the way to the cardinals, with fresh plates in my cameras, and high hopes in my heart, I pa.s.sed an unsually large fine thistle, with half a dozen Thysbe moths fluttering over it as if nearly crazed with fragrance, or honey they were sipping.

"Come here! Come here! Come here!" intoned the cardinal, from the sycamore of Rainbow Bottom.

"Just you wait a second, old fellow!" I heard myself answering.

Scarcely realizing what I was doing, the tripod was set up, the best camera taken out, and focused on that thistle head. The moths paid no attention to bees, b.u.t.terflies, or humming-birds visiting the thistle, but this was too formidable, and by the time the choicest heads were in focus, all the little red fellows had darted to another plant. If the camera was moved there, they would change again, so I sat in the shade of a clump of papaws to wait and see if they would not grow accustomed to it.

They kept me longer than I had expected, and the chances are I would have answered the cardinal's call, and gone to the river, had it not been for the interest found in watching a beautiful grey squirrel that homed in an ivy-covered stump in the pasture. He seemed to have much business on the fence at the hilltop, and raced back and forth to it repeatedly. He carried something, I could not always tell what, but at times it was green haws. Once he came with no food, and at such a headlong run that he almost turned somersaults as he scampered up the tree.

For a long time he was quiet, then he cautiously peeped out.

After a while he ventured to the ground, raced to a dead stump, and sitting on it, barked and scolded with all his might. Then he darted home again. When he had repeated this performance several times, the idea became apparent. There was some danger to be defied in Rainbow Bottom, but not a sound must be made from his home.

The bark of a dog hurried me to the fence in time to see some hunters pa.s.sing in the bottom, but I thanked mercy they were on the opposite side of the river and it was not probable they would wade, so my birds would not be disturbed. When the squirrel felt that he must bark and chatter, or burst with tense emotions, he discreetly left his mate and nest. I did some serious thinking on the 'instinct' question. He might choose a hollow log for his home by instinct, or eat certain foods because hunger urged him, but could instinct teach him not to make a sound where his young family lay? Without a doubt, for this same reason, the cardinal sang from every tree and bush around Horseshoe Bend, save the sumac where his mate hovered their young.

The matter presented itself in this way. The squirrel has feet, and he runs with them. He has teeth, and he eats with them. He has lungs, and he breathes with them. Every organ of his interior has its purpose, and is used to fulfil it. His big, prominent eyes come from long residence in dark hollows. His bushy tail helps him in long jumps from tree to tree. Every part of his anatomy is created, designed and used to serve some purpose, save only his brain, the most complex and complicated part of him. Its only use and purpose is to form one small 'tidbit' for the palate of the epicure! Like Sir Francis, who preached a sermon to the birds, I found me delivering myself of a lecture to the squirrels, birds, and moths of Suns.h.i.+ne Hill. The final summing up was, that the squirrel used his feet, teeth, eyes and tail; that could be seen easily, and by his actions it could be seen just as clearly that he used his brain also.

There was not a Thysbe in front of the lens, so picking up a long cudgel I always carry afield, and going quietly to surrounding thistles, I jarred them lightly with it, and began rounding up the Hemaris family in the direction of the camera. The trick was a complete success. Soon I had an exposure on two. After they had faced the camera once, and experienced no injury, like the birds, they accepted it as part of the landscape. The work was so fascinating, and the pictures on the ground gla.s.s so worth while, that before I realized what I was doing, half a dozen large plates were gone, and for this reason, work with the cardinals that day ended at noon. This is why I feel that at times in bird work the moths literally 'thrust themselves' upon me.

CHAPTER XIII The Modest Moth: Triptogon Modesta

Of course this moth was named Modesta because of modest colouring.

It reminds me of a dove, being one of my prime favourites. On wing it is suggestive of Polyphemus, but its colours are lighter and softer.

Great beauty that Polyphemus is, Modesta equals it.

Modesta belongs to the genus Triptogon, species Modesta--hence the common name, the Modest moth. I am told that in the east this moth is of stronger colouring than in the central and western states. I do not know about the centre and west, but I do know that only as far east as Indiana, Modesta is of more delicate colouring than it is described by scientists of New York and Pennsylvania; and, of course, as in almost every case, the female is not so strongly coloured as the male.

I can cla.s.s the Modest moth and its caterpillar among those I know, but my acquaintance with it is more limited than with almost any other.

My first introduction came when I found a caterpillar of striking appearance on water sprouts growing around a poplar stump in a stretch of trees beside the Wabash. I carried it home with a supply of the leaves for diet, but as a matter of luck, it had finished eating, and was ready to pupate. I write of this as good luck, because the poplar tree is almost extinct in my location. I know of only one in the fields, those beside the river, and a few used for ornamental shade trees. They are so scarce I would have had trouble to provide the caterpillar with natural food; so I was glad that it was ready to pupate when found.

Any one can identify this caterpillar easily, as it is most peculiar. There is a purplish pink cast on the head and mouth of the full-grown caterpillar, and purplish red around the props. The body is a very light blue-green, faintly tinged with white, and yellow in places. On the sides are white obliques, or white, shaded with pink, and at the base of these, a small oval marking.

There is a small short horn on the head. But the distinguis.h.i.+ng mark is a ma.s.s of little white granules, scattered all over the caterpillar. It is so peppered with these, that failure to identify it is impossible.

These caterpillars pupate in the ground. I knew that, but this was before I had learned that the caterpillar worked out a hole in the ground, and the pupa case only touched the earth upon which it lay. So when my Modesta caterpillar ceased crawling, lay quietly, turned dark, shrank one half in length, and finally burst the dead skin, and emerged in a s.h.i.+ning dark brown pupa case two inches long, I got in my work. I did well. A spade full of garden soil was thoroughly sifted, baked in the oven to kill parasites and insects, cooled, and put in a box, and the pupa case buried in it. Every time it rained, I opened the box, and moistened the earth. Two months after time for emergence, I dug out the pupa case to find it white with mould. I had no idea what the trouble was, for I had done much work over that case, and the whole winter tended it solicitously. It was one of my earliest attempts, and I never have found another caterpillar, or any eggs, though I often search the poplars for them.

However, something better happened. I say better, because I think if they will make honest confession, all people who have gathered eggs and raised caterpillars from them in confinement, by feeding cut leaves, will admit that the pupa cases they get, and the moths they produce are only about half size. The big fine cases and coc.o.o.ns are the ones you find made by caterpillars in freedom, or by those that have pa.s.sed at least the fourth or fifth moult out of doors. So it was a better thing for my ill.u.s.tration, and for my painting, when in June of this year, Raymond, in crossing town from a ball game, found a large, perfect Modesta female. He secured her in his hat, and hurried to me. Raymond's hat has had many wonderful things in it besides his head, and his pockets are always lumpy with boxes.

Although perfect, she had mated, deposited her eggs, and was declining. All she wanted was to be left alone, and she would sit with wings widespread wherever placed. I was in the orchard, treating myself to some rare big musky red raspberries that are my especial property, when Raymond came with her. He set her on a shoot before me, and guarded her while I arranged a camera. She was the most complacent subject I ever handled outdoors, and did not make even an attempt to fly. Raymond was supposed to be watching while I worked, but our confidence in her was so great, that I paid all my attention to polis.h.i.+ng my lenses, and getting good light, while Raymond gathered berries with one hand, and promiscuously waved the net over the bushes with the other.

During the first exposure, Modesta was allowed to place and poise herself as seemed natural. For a second, I used the brush on her gently, and coaxed her wings into spreading a little wider than was natural. These positions gave every evidence of being pleasing and yet I was not satisfied. There was something else in the back of my head that kept obtruding itself as I walked to the Cabin, with the beautiful moth clinging to my fingers. I did not feel quite happy about her, so she was placed in a large box, lined with corrugated paper, to wait a while until the mist in my brain cleared, and my nebulous disturbance evolved an idea. It came slowly. I had a caterpillar long ago, and had investigated the history of this moth. I asked Raymond where he found her and he said, "Coming from the game." Now I questioned him about the kind of a tree, and he promptly answered, "On one of those poplars behind the schoolhouse."

That was the clue. Instantly I recognized it. A poplar limb was what I wanted. Its fine, glossy leaf, flattened stem, and smooth upright twigs made a setting, appropriate, above all others, for the Modest moth.

I explained the situation to the Deacon, and he had Brenner drive with him to the Hirschy farm, and help secure a limb from one of the very few Lombardy poplars of this region. They drove very fast, and I had to trouble to induce Modesta to clamber over a poplar twig, and settle. Then by gently stroking, an unusual wing sweep was secured, because there is a wonderful purple-pink and a peculiar blue on the back wings.

It has been my experience that the longer a moth of these big short-lived subjects remains out of doors, the paler its colours become, and most of them fade rapidly when mounted, if not kept in the dark. So my Modesta may have been slightly faded, but she could have been several shades paler and yet appeared most beautiful to me.

Her head, shoulders, and abdomen were a lovely dove grey; that soft tan grey, with a warm shade, almost suggestive of pink. I suppose the reason I thought of this was because at the time two pairs of doves, one on a heap of driftwood overhanging the river, and the other in an apple tree in the Aspy orchard a few rods away, were giving me much trouble, and I had dove grey on my mind.

This same dove grey coloured the basic third of the fore-wings.

Then they were crossed with a band only a little less in width, of rich cinnamon brown. There was a narrow wavy line of lighter brown, and the remaining third of the wing was paler, but with darker shadings. These four distinct colour divisions were exquisitely blended, and on the darkest band, near the costa, was a tiny white half moon. The under sides of the fore-wings were a delicate brownish grey, with heavy flus.h.i.+ngs of a purplish pink, a most beautiful colour.

The back wings were dove colour near the abdomen, more of a mouse colour around the edges, and beginning strongly at the base, and spreading in lighter shade over the wing, was the same purplish pink of the front under-wing, only much stronger. Near the abdomen, a little below half the length, and adjoining the grey; each wing had a mark difficult to describe in shape, and of rich blue colour.

The antennae stood up stoutly, and were of dove grey on one side, and white on the other. The thorax, legs, and under side of the abdomen were more of the mouse grey in colour. Over the whole moth in strong light, there was an almost intangible flus.h.i.+ng of palest purplish pink. It may have shaded through the fore-wing from beneath, and over the back wing from above. At any rate, it was there, and so lovely and delicate was the whole colour scheme, it made me feel that I would give much to see a newly emerged male of this species. In my childhood my mother called this colour aniline red.

I once asked a Chicago importer if he believed that Oriental rug weavers sometimes use these big night moths as colour guides in their weaving. He said he had heard this, and gave me the freedom of his rarest rugs. Of course the designs woven into these rugs have a history, and a meaning for those who understand. There were three, almost priceless, one of which I am quite sure copied its greys, terra cotta, and black shades from Cecropia.

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 peac.o.c.k 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 coc.o.o.n and then gave complete portrayal of each stage in the evolution of one coc.o.o.n 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 ill.u.s.trated 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?'

Would I? Instantly I knew this book was not finished. As I held the firm, heavy, leaf-rolled coc.o.o.ns in my hand, I could see the last chapter sliding over from fourteen to fifteen to make place for Promethea, the loveliest of the Attacine group, a cousin of Cecropia. Often I had seen the pictured coc.o.o.n, in its neat little, tight little leaf-covered shelter, and the mounted moths of scientific collections and museums; I knew their beautiful forms and remembered the reddish tinge flus.h.i.+ng the almost black coat of the male and the red wine and clay-coloured female with her elaborate marks, spots, and lines. Right there the book stopped at leaf-fall early in November to await the outcome of those three coc.o.o.ns. If they would yield a pair in the spring, and if that pair would emerge close enough together to mate and produce fertile eggs, then by fall of the coming year I would have a complete life history. That was a long wait, thickly punctuated with 'ifs.'

Then the twig was carried to my room and stood in a vase of intricate workmans.h.i.+p and rare colouring.

Every few days I examined those coc.o.o.ns and tested them by weight. I was sure they were perfect. That spring I had been working all day and often at night, so I welcomed an opportunity to spend a few days at a lake where I would meet many friends; boating and fis.h.i.+ng were fine, while the surrounding country was one uninterrupted panorama of exquisite land and water pictures.

I packed and started so hastily I forgot my precious coc.o.o.ns.

Two weeks later on my return, before I entered the Cabin, I walked round it to see if my flowers had been properly watered and tended. It was not later than three in the afternoon but I saw at least a dozen wonderful big moths, dusky and luring, fluttering eagerly over the wild roses covering a south window of the Deacon's room adjoining mine on the west. Instantly I knew what that meant.

I hurried to the room and found a female Promothea at the top of the screen covering a window that the caretaker had slightly lowered.

I caught up a net and ran to bring a step-ladder. The back foundation is several feet high and that threw the tops of the windows close under the eaves. I mounted to the last step and balancing made a sweep to capture a moth. They could see me and scattered in all directions. I waited until they were beginning to return, when from the thicket of leaves emerged a deep rose-flushed little moth that sailed away, with every black one in pursuit.

I almost fell from the ladder. I went inside, only to learn that what I feared was true. The wind had loosened the screen in my absence, and the moth had pa.s.sed through a crack, so narrow it seemed impossible for it to escape.