Choice could be made in all that plethora, and a male and female of most perfect colouring and markings were selected, for my studies of a pair. One male was mounted and a very large female on account of her size. That completed my Imperialis records from eggs to caterpillars, pupae and moths.
The necessity for a book on this subject; made simple to the understanding, and attractive to the eye of the masses, never was so deeply impressed upon me as in an experience with Imperialis. Molly-Cotton was attending a house-party, and her host had chartered a pavilion at a city park for a summer night dance. At the close of one of the numbers; over the heads of the laughing crowd, there swept toward the light a large yellow moth.
With one dexterous sweep the host caught it, and while the dancers crowded around him with exclamations of wonder and delight, he presented it to Molly-Cotton and asked, "Do you know what it is?"
She laughingly answered, "Yes. But you don't!"
"Guilty!" he responded. "Name it."
For one fleeting instant Molly-Cotton measured the company. There was no one present who was not the graduate of a commissioned high school. There were girls who were students at The Castle, Smith, Vassar, and Bryn Mawr. The host was a Cornell junior, and there were men from Harvard and Yale.
"It is an Eacles Imperialis Io Polyphemus Cecropia Regalis," she said. Then in breathless suspense she waited.
"Shades of Homer!" cried the host. "Where did you learn it?"
"They are flying all through the Cabin at home," she replied. "There was a tumbler turned over their eggs on the dining-room floor, and you dared not sit on the right side of the library window seat because of them when I left."
"What do you want with their eggs?" asked a girl.