My specimen was readily identified as Philampelus Pandorus, of
which I had no moth, so I took extra care of it in the hope of a
new picture in the spring. It had a little flat head that could be
drawn inside the body like a turtle, and on the sides were oblique
touches of salmon. Something that appeared to be a place for a
horn could be seen, and a yellow tubercle was surrounded by a
black line. It ate for three days, and then began racing so
frantically around the box, I thought confinement must be harmful,
so I gave it the freedom of the Cabin, warning all my family to
`look well to their footsteps.' It stopped travelling after a day
or two at a screen covering the music-room window, and there I
found it one morning lying still, a shrivelled, shrunken thing;
only half the former length, so it was carefully picked up, and
thrown away!
Of course the caterpillar was in the process of changing into the
pupa, and if I had known enough to lay it on the sand in my box,
and wait a few days, without doubt a fine pupa would have emerged
from that shrunken skin, from which, in the spring, I could have
secured an exquisite moth, with shades of olive green, flushed
with pink.
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