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I decided that it would be sufficient to explain the whole situation to the satisfaction of any one, if I began the book with a detailed history of moth, egg, caterpillar, and cocoon and then gave complete portrayal of each stage in the evolution of one cocoon and one pupa case moth.
A heavy shower of rain, by bringing out the landshells, enabled me to pick up half-a-dozen species of Helix, Bulimus, and Pupa, at the foot of the hedgerows; I was anxious to procure some to ascertain whether any were non-European forms; one was even quite a new species.
A day later Willis Glendenning brought me another Regalis caterpillar. I made two pictures of it, although transformation to the pupa stage was so far advanced that it was only half length, and had a shrivelled appearance like the one I once threw away.
The larva is elongate, slender, flattened beneath and spotted with black, attenuated at each end, with fleshy filaments on the sides above the legs, while the head is flattened and rather forked above. It feeds on trees and rests attached to the trunks. The pupa is covered with a bluish efflorescence, enclosed in a slight cocoon of silk, spun amongst leaves or bark."
A hard task, this exhumation by dint of the blows of a cleft and palpitating head. Moreover, the exhausting effort has to be made at the moment of greatest weakness, when the insect leaves that protecting casket, its pupa. It emerges from it pale, flabby and unsightly, sorrily clad in the wings which, folded lengthwise and made shorter by their scalloped edge, only just cover the top of the back.
Muscles and bowels have disappeared, converted into broth and gradually consumed by the teeming throng. In every part, what was wet has become dry, what was solid muddy. In vain my forceps ransacks every nook and corner: it does not hit upon a single pupa. All the worms have emigrated, all, without exception.
There were beautiful markings of very dark colour and white on the thorax, head, shoulders, and back wings next the body. The big eyes, quite the largest of any moth I remember, reminded me of owl eyes in the light. The antennae, dark, grey-brown on top, and white on the under side, turned back and drooped beside the costa, no doubt in the position they occupied in the pupa case.
Would it not be the same with the chrysalis of the great peacock, dissected cell by cell by hundreds of infinitesimal anatomists? Would it not be the same with the pupa of the flesh fly? These are organisms put back into the crucible, reverting to the egg state for a second birth. There is reason to believe, therefore, that their destruction crumb by crumb is merciful.
In this little chamber close the length and circumference of an average sized woman's two top joints of the first finger, the caterpillar transforms to the pupa stage, crowding its cast skin in a wad at the bottom. At time for emergence the moth bursts the pupa case, which is extremely thin and papery compared with the cases of burrowing species.
Emerton's observations we should judge that the pupa state lasted from three to four weeks, as the larvæ began to transform the first of August, and appeared during the last week of the same month as perfect bees. The Andrena is seen as late as the first week in September, and again early in April, about the flowers of the willow. It is one of the largest of its genus and a common species.
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