The Emperor moth came out on the 2nd of April, and suddenly filled the cardboard box like the noonday phantom in the sunshine, so unexpected and wonderful. His wings, which as he rests are spread open, stretched from one side of the box to the other, hovering over his old home, a beautiful grey tipped with pink, and peacock-eyed, ring within ring. He clung to the piece of heather upon which the caterpillar was found seven months before, and which he had fixed in the threads of his cocoon. The immense dark green caterpillar banded with black and spotted with gold was found on the 29th of August among the heather on the hill-side; the sun burning, the air all alight with the fire of the beams, a day of flame--as if the keen tips of the pine needles would take fire in the glow. The caterpillar in its colour and size seemed almost tropical; those who have not seen it would scarcely believe that a caterpillar could be so magnificent; but indoors in the cardboard box he lost his sun-burnished colour and half his glory. Immediately afterwards he spun his cocoon, and there he stayed for seven long months, so that the moth thus suddenly appearing, without any cracking or opening of the cocoon, appeared to be created on the spot. At first, indeed, some thought it was a moth that had entered by the window, there being no rent or place of exit from the perfect case. Within, however, was the broken and blackened skin of the caterpillar and the detached thorax: the cocoon is like the baskets for taking fish at weirs, only the willows merely touch at the tip, and through these he had crept out, and they closed behind him.