I laid the pupa on top of the sand, and then dug up the first one,
as I was afraid of the earth in which it lay. The case was sound,
and in fine condition. All of these pupae lived and seemed perfect.
Narrow antennae and abdominal formation marked the big one a female,
while broader antlers and the clearly outlined `claspers' proved
the smaller ones males. A little sphagnum moss, that was dampened
slightly every few days, was kept around them. The one that entered
the ground had pushed the earth from it on all, sides at a depth of
three inches, and hollowed an oval space the size of a medium hen
egg, in which the pupa lay, but there was no trace of its cast skin.
Those that pupated on the ground had left their skins at the thorax,
and lay two inches from them. The horns came off with the skin, and
the lining of the segments and the covering of the feet showed. At
first the cast skins were green, but they soon turned a dirty grey,
and the horns blackened.
So from having no personal experience at all with our rarest moth,
inside a few days of latter August and early September, weeks after
hope had been abandoned for the season, I found myself with several
as fine studies of the male as I could make, one of an immense
caterpillar at maturity, one half-transformed to the moth, and three
fine pupa cases.
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