re for me? Would the
famous Bombyx issue from it?

Let us call it by its other name, the Banded Monk. This original name of
Monk was suggested by the costume of the male; a monk's robe of a modest
rusty red. But in the case of the female the brown fustian gives place
to a beautiful velvet, with a pale transversal band and little white
eyes on the fore pair of wings.

The Monk is not a common butterfly which can be caught by any one who
takes out a net at the proper season. I have never seen it around our
village or in the solitude of my grounds during a residence of twenty
years. It is true that I am not a fervent butterfly-catcher; the dead
insect of the collector's cabinet has little interest for me; I must
have it living, in the exercise of its functions. But although I have
not the collector's zeal I have an attentive eye to all that flies or
crawls in the fields. A butterfly so remarkable for its size and
colouring would never have escaped my notice had I encountered it.

The little searcher whom I had enticed by a promise of rides upon wooden
horses never made a second find. For three years I requisitioned friends
and neighbours, and especially their children, sharp-sighted snappers-up
of trifles; I myself hunted often under heaps of withered leaves; I
inspected stone-heaps and visited hollow tree-trunks. Useless pains; the
precious cocoon was not to be found. It is enough to say that the Banded
Monk is extremely rare in my neighbourhood. The importance of this fact
will presently appear.

As I suspected, my cocoon was truly that of the celebrated Oak Eggar. On
the 20th of August a female emerged from it: corpulent, big-bellied,
coloured like the male, but lighter in hue. I placed her under the usual
wire cover in the centre of my laboratory table, littered as it was with
books, bottles, trays, boxes, test-tubes, and other apparatus. I have
explained the situation in speaking of the Great Peacock. Two windows
light the room, both opening on the garden. One was closed, the other
open day and night. The butterfly was placed in the shade, between the
lines of the two windows, at a distance of 12 or 15 feet.

The rest of that day and the next went by without any occurrence worthy
of notice. Hanging by the feet to the front of the wire cover, on the
side nearest to the light, the prisoner was motionless, inert. There was
no oscillation of the wings, no tremor of the antennae, the female of the
Great Peacock behave