Such is Luna in her various transformations. Notwithstanding her
great size and almost matchless loveliness, her habits are not
proportionally noteworthy. The gift of superior beauty, in the insect
as in the mammalian world, does not often carry with it a high order
of intelligence. It is true the young Luna knows pretty well the
secret of dissembling. How quickly she perceives the approach of an
enemy! And she knows how to deal with him, but her little trick of
simulating death, or an immobile twig, does not always succeed with
the wily spider, or artful ichneumon. That she is a tolerably good
connoisseur of the character of foods, there can be no question. You
cannot deceive her. Take from her the foods her ancestors have used
for centuries untold, and substitute others she knows nothing about,
and she is at once cognizant of the change. However hungry she may be,
and in her early growing years she is ever a voracious feeder, she
will starve rather than eat what the unwritten law of her race has
strictly interdicted. I have known cases where death has ensued, or
the caterpillar has pupated earlier than usual, when alien food has
been given it to eat. But in the beginning of life, just after the
first skin-moulting has been effected, ere the little creature has
attained its seventh day of age, no trouble is experienced in changing
the food, almost anything edible in the plant-line being eaten, though
some things with a more decided relish than others. In the matter of
cocoon-weaving, where the necessary leaves for a basis cannot be
obtained, as occurs in captivity, the inconvenience is overcome, but
not without difficulty. Leaves, you must know, are in Luna’s way of
thinking, as essential to cocoon-building as wooden or iron beams and
girders to man’s own constructing. Without a framework of some sort,
what a sorry attempt would we make at home-building, but Luna does
succeed, after a good deal of wise planning and no little worry, in
producing a house which is well worthy her effort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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