Moths of the Limberlost: A Book About Limberlost Cabin

th of the Michigan line and ten west of the Ohio. In its day it covered a large area. When I arrived; there were miles of unbroken forest, lakes pro

ost draped, while from May until October it was practically tropical jungle. From it I hav

s took the best of the soft wood. Then a ditch, in reality a canal, was dredged across the north end through, my best territory, and that carried the water to the Wabash River until oil men could enter the swamp. From that time the wealth they drew to the surface constantly materialized in macadamized roads, cosy homes, and big farms of unsurpassed richness, suitable for growing onions, celery, sugar beets, corn and potatoes, as repeatedly h

swamp, gave to it a name, afterward to be on the lips of millions; to him it was deadly poison. To me it has been of unsp

re placed before the home of a pair of birds, the bushes parted to admit light, and clinging to them I found a creature, often having the bird's sweep of wing, of colour pale green with decorations of lavender and yellow or running the gamut from p

too much for fast exposures, or on grey days, by searching for moths. Then in collecting abandoned nests, cocoons were found on limbs, inside stumps, among leaves when gathering nuts, or queer shining pupae-cases came to light as I lifted wild flowers in the fall. A

iends of my work began carrying them to me. Repeatedly, I have gone through the entire life process, from mating newly emerged moths, the egg period, caterpillar life, with its complicated moults and changes, the spinning of the cocoons, the miraculous winter sleep, to the spring appearance; and with my cameras

vate collections or museums. A lifeless moth fades rapidly under the most favourable conditions. A moth at eight days of age, in the last stages of decline, is from four to six distinct shades lighter in colour than at six hours from

pecies of day and night or even attempting all the ramifications of-say the alluringly beautiful Catocalae family-life is too short, unless devoted to this purpose alone. But if I frankly confess my limitations, and offer the book to my nature-loving friends merely as an introduction to the most exquisite creation of the swamp; a

s, as have the birds. I have been compelled to use their scientific names to assist in identification, and at times I have had to resort to technical terms, becau

fic problems concerning everything in nature from her greatest to her most minute forms. A Nature Lover works at any occu

er, Boisduval, Robinson, Smith, Butler, Fernald, Beutenmuller, Hicks, Rothschild, Hampson, Stretch, Lyman, or any of a dozen others. Possessing such an imposing array of names there should be no necessity to add to them. These men have impaled moths and dissected, magnified and located brain, heart and nerves. After finishing the interior they have given to the most minute exterior organ from two to three inches of Latin name. From them we learn that it requires a coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia, tarsus, ungues, pulvillus, and anterior, medial and posterior spurs to provide a

so broken the habit of study that concentration is distasteful if not impossible? These people number in the ratio of a million to one Naturalist. They would be delighted to learn the simplest name possible for the creatures they or their friends

cessary to purchase a text-book, devoid of all human interest or literary possibility, and wade through pages of scientific dissertation, all the time having the feeling that perhaps through his lack of experience his identification was not aright, he usually p

riters. My complaint against them is that they neglect essential detail and are not always rightly informed. They confuse one with a flood of scientific terms describi

ot some of them explain further that a caterpillar of, say, six inches in length will shrink to THREE, its skin become loosened, the horns drop limp, and the creature appear dead and disintegrating? Because no one mentioned these thing

n the simple statement that certai

I was very anxious about some rare moths. When they failed to emerge in season I dug them out, only to find that those not moulded had been held fast by the damp, packed earth, and all were ruined. I lear

hs I kept some cases lying on their backs with the feet up and photographed them in that position. I had to discover for myself that caterpillars that pupate in the ground chang

overing, and the ringed abdominal sections. With many feeders there is a long, fragile tongue shield. The head is rounded and immovable of its own volition. The abdominal part is in rings that can be turned and twisted; on the tip are two tiny, needlesharp points, and on each of three rings of the abdominal shield there are in many cases a pair of tiny hooks, very

the trunks of trees, after the insect has reached the surface and abandoned them. Think what would happen to the delicate moth head, wings, and downy covering! I am willing to wager all I possess, that no lepidopterist, or any amateur, ever found a

abdomen. It turned, twisted, dug away the dirt, fastened the abdominal tip, pulled up the head, and then bored with the tip again. Later I saw several othe

ars on the twenty-seventh and put away the box to be attended on that date. Having occasion to move it on the twentyfourth, I peeped in and found half my caterpillars out and starved, proving that they had been hatched

ke some sort of cocoon or shelter, which may be of pure silk neatly wound, or of silk mixed with hair and

ig, bark, or some other foundation against which it was spun, I never have seen a cocoon with shred, filament, or particle of anything used in its composition that was not drawn from the spinning tube or inter

ts out of doors, "the elimination was ninety-two per cent on fences where pupae were conspicuous, as against fifty-two per cent among nettles, where t

o their kind that home elsewhere. The test is not fair enough to be worth consideration. If these same pupae had been as conspicuously placed as on the fence, on any EDIBLE GROWTH, in the same location as the fence, and then left to the mercy of playing children, grazing stock, field mice, sna

k among the birds, and for the moths his interest reached such a pitch that he spent many hours afield in search of eggs, caterpillars, cocoons, and moths, when my work confined me to the cabin. He has carried to me many of my rarest cocoons, and found in their native haunts several moths needed to complete the book. It is to be hoped that these wonderful days afield have brought their own compensation, for