The Great Peacock [46] is the largest Moth of our district. Her caterpillar, which is yellow-hued, with turquoise-blue spots surrounded by black hairs, spins itself, at the foot of the almond-trees, a robust cocoon whose ingenious construction has long been celebrated. At the moment of her deliverance, the Mulberry Bombyx [47] has in her stomach a particular solvent which the new-born Moth disgorges against the wall of the cocoon to soften it, to dissolve the gum that sticks the threads together and in this way to force an exit by the mere pressure of her head. With the aid of this reagent, the recluse is able triumphantly to attack her silken prison at the fore-end, the rear-end or the side, as I discover by turning the chrysalis in its cocoon, which I slit with a pair of scissors and then sew up again. Whatever the spot to be perforated for the emergence, a spot which my intervention varies at will, the liquid disgorged promptly soaks into and softens the wall, whereupon the captive, struggling with her fore-limbs and pushing her forehead against the tangle of unstuck threads, makes herself a passage with the same ease as in her natural liberation. The Great Peacock is not endowed with this method of delivery by means of a solvent; her stomach is incapable of preparing the corrosive calculated to destroy, at any point, the defensive enclosure which is now a prison-wall. Indeed, if I reverse the chrysalis in its cocoon, opened and then closed with a few stitches, the Moth always dies, being powerless to free herself. When the point to be forced is changed, the release becomes impossible. To emerge from this shell, a genuine strong-box, a special method is therefore necessary, one having no relation to the chemical method of the Mulberry Bombyx. Let me describe, as others have done before me, how things happen. At the fore-end of the cocoon, a conical end, whereas the other is rounded, the threads are not glued together; every elsewhere, the silken web is cemented with a gummy product that turns it into a stout, waterproof parchment. Those front threads, which are almost straight, converge at their free end and form a cone-shaped series of palisades, having as their common base the circle where the use of the gummy cement is suddenly discontinued. The arrangement can best be compared with the mouth of an Eel-pot, which the fish readily enters by following the funnel of osier-switches, but from which the imprudent one cannot get out again, because the narrow passage closes its palisade at the least effort to push through.