Yes, we are a pair of prejudiced old fogeys when we linger with a certain fondness over the marvels of perfection. Who troubles about these futilities nowadays? So-called serious science, the science which spells honour, profit and renown, consists in slicing your animal with very costly instruments into tiny circular sections. My housekeeper does as much with a bunch of carrots, with no higher pretension than to concoct a modest dish, which is not an invariable success. In the problem of life are we more successful when we have split a fibre into four and cut a cell into shavings? It hardly seems so. The riddle is as dark as ever. Ah, how much better is your method, my dear master; above all, how much loftier your philosophy, how much more wholesome and invigorating! Here at last is the Moth at the surface. With the deliberate slowness demanded by so delicate an operation, she spreads her bunched wings, extends her antennæ and puffs out her fleece. Her costume is a modest one: upper wings grey, striped with a few crinkly brown streaks; under-wings white; thorax covered with thick grey fur; abdomen clad in bright-russet velvet. The last segment has a pale-gold sheen. At first sight it appears bare. It is not, however; but, in place of hairs like those of the other segments, it has, on its dorsal surface, scales so well assembled and so close together that the whole seems to form a continuous block, like a nugget. Let us touch this trinket with the point of a needle. However gently we rub, a multitude of scales come off and flutter at the least breath, shining like mica spangles. Their concave form, their shape, an elongated oval, their colouring, white in the lower half but reddish gold in the upper, give them, if we allow for the difference in size, a certain resemblance to the scales surrounding the heads of some of the centaury tribe. Such is the golden fleece of which the mother will despoil herself in order to cover the cylinder of her eggs. The nugget of her hind-quarters, exfoliated spangle by spangle, will form a roof for the germs arranged like the grain in a corn-cob. I was anxious to watch the actual placing of these pretty tiles, which are fixed at the pale end with a speck of cement, leaving the coloured end free. Circumstances did not favour me. Inactive all day, motionless on some needle of the lower branches, the Moth, whose life is very short, moves only in the darkness of the night. Both her mating and egg-laying are nocturnal. On the morrow, all is finished: the Bombyx has lived. Under these conditions, it was impossible, by the doubtful beams of a lantern, to follow satisfactorily the labour of the mother on the pine-trees in the garden.