und of the whirring of
their wings. The down flies from their wings to such an extent that
one continually sneezes. The spectacle of the stacks of trays covered
by these ecstatic moths is remarkable, but still more remarkable is
the thrilling sense of the power of the life-force in a supposedly low
form of consciousness.

The wonder of the scene is missed, no doubt, by most of those who are
habituated to it. From time to time weary, stolid-looking girls or old
women lift down the trays and run their hands over them in order to
pick up superfluous male moths. Sometimes the male moths are walking
about the newspaper, sometimes they are torn callously from the
embrace of their mates. The fate of the male moths is to be flung into
a basket where they stay until the next day, when perhaps some of them
may be mated again. The novice is impressed not only by the
ruthlessness of this treatment but by the way in which the whole loft
is littered by male moths which have fallen or have been flung on the
floor and are being trampled on.

The female moths, when their partners have been removed, are taken
downstairs in newspapers in order to be put into the little tin
receptacles where the eggs are to be laid. On a tray there are spread
out a number of egg cards with, as before mentioned, twenty-eight
printed circles on each of them. On these circles are placed the
twenty-eight half-inch-high bottomless enclosures of tin. Some one
takes up a handful of moths and scatters them over the tins. Some of
the moths fall neatly into a tin apiece. Others are helped into the
little enclosures in which, to do them credit, they are only too
willing to take up their quarters. The curious thing is the way in
which each moth settles down within her ring. Indeed from the moment
of her emergence from the cocoon until now she has never used her
wings to fly. Nor did the male moth seem to wish to fly. The sexes
concentrate their whole attention on mating. After that the female
thinks of nothing but laying eggs. Almost immediately after she is
placed within her little tin she begins to deposit eggs, and within a
few hours the circle of the card is covered.

Food is given neither to the females nor to the males. Those which are
not kept in reserve for possible use on the second day are flung out
of doors. When the female moth has deposited her eggs she also is
destroyed.[140] The _shoji_ of the breeding and egg-laying rooms
permit only of a diffused