He wears a costume of deepest black, all except the edges of the wings, which, having no scales, remain diaphanous. His antennæ, likewise black, are wide and graceful plumes. Were they on a larger scale, they would throw the feathered beauty of the Marabou and Ostrich into the shade. The bravely beplumed one visits case after case in his tortuous flight, prying into the secrets of those alcoves. If things go as he wishes, he settles, with a quick flutter of his wings, on the extremity of the denuded vestibule. Comes the wedding, as discreet as that of the smaller Psyche. Here is yet another who does not see or at most catches a fleeting glimpse of her for whose sake he has donned Marabou-feathers and a black-velvet cloak. The recluse on her side is equally impatient. The lovers are short-lived; they die in my cages within three or four days, so that, for long intervals, until the hatching of some late-comer, the female population is short of suitors. So, when the morning sun, already hot, strikes the cage, a very singular spectacle is repeated many times before my eyes. The entrance to the vestibule swells imperceptibly, opens and emits a mass of infinitely delicate down. A Spider’s web, carded and made into wadding, would give nothing of such gossamer fineness. It is a vaporous cloud. Then, from out of this incomparable eiderdown, appear the head and fore-part of a very different sort of caterpillar from the original collector of straws. It is the mistress of the house, the marriageable Moth, who, feeling her hour about to come and failing to receive the expected visit, herself makes the advances and goes, as far as she can, to meet her plumed swain. He does not come hastening up and for good reason: there is not a male left in the establishment. For two or three hours the poor forsaken one leans, without moving, from her window. Then, tired of waiting, very gently she goes indoors again, backwards, and returns to her cell. Next day, the day after and later still, as long as her strength permits, she reappears on her balcony, always in the morning, in the soft rays of a warm sun and always on a sofa of that incomparable down, which disperses and turns to vapour if I merely fan it with my hand. Again no one comes. For the last time the disappointed Moth goes back to her boudoir, never to leave it again. She dies in it, dries up, a useless thing. I hold my bell-jars responsible for this crime against motherhood. In the open fields, without a doubt, sooner or later wooers would have appeared, coming from the four winds.