While the gaudy moth or butterfly, when contrasted in wisdom and sense with the dingy-colored bee, may suffer in comparison, yet she is by no means the dull, stupid creature she is pictured to be. She lives, it is a fact, as has often been said, for the increase of her race, but the interest she shows for the young she may never see, in laying her eggs upon the plant that is to serve them as food and home, puts her upon a rather high plane of intelligent existence. Luna’s life, in the perfect state, is usually quite brief. It is one of the happiest of honeymoons. Love conquers and destroys all other passions of her being, while her gormandizing offspring are never troubled by the ardent flame which consumes even the thought of sipping the nectar of the flowers that rival in beauty the wings of the mother, who is the perfect representation and embodiment of elegance and grace. While the early insect lives and eats, the adult form, upon whom Dame Nature has expended so much wealth of color and such symmetry of shape, which make her a “thing of beauty and a joy forever,” lives and dies, for in her seeming haste and forgetfulness the great mother of us all has made her without the essential means of tasting food, a delight and an enjoyment which the lords of creation are so wont to esteem the purpose and aim of all human existence. BASKET-CARRIERS. You who have been to the country, in the summer, and who have kept your eyes alive to the surroundings, have doubtless seen the Basket-worm feeding upon the leaves of the quince, apple, peach, linden, and other deciduous trees, as well as upon such evergreen as the arbor-vitæ, Norway spruce, and red cedar. In Germany these worms are popularly designated _Sack-träger_, or Sack-bearer, while the mature insect is spoken of as the House-builder Moth. Scientifically speaking, the latter is called _Thyridopteryx ephemeræformis_, a name which is nearly twice the length of the caterpillar it represents. During the winter the curious weather-beaten bags of these worms may be observed hanging from the tree-branches, apparently without a trace of the odd-looking creatures that hung them there the autumn before. If a number of these bags are gathered and cut open at this time, many of them will be discovered to be empty, but the greater portion will be found partly full of yellow eggs. Those which do not contain eggs are male bags, and the empty chrysalis of the male will be found protruding from the lower extremity. Upon close examination these eggs will be observed to be obovate in form, soft and opaque, about one-twentieth of an inch in length, and surrounded by more or less fawn-colored silky down. If left to themselves, they hatch sometime in May, or early in June.