, in the glass case when a largish insect flew by my
face, and when it settled it looked like a handsome moth or butterfly.
It was brilliant orange on the lower wings, the upper being shaded
orange brown, very moth-like, but the antennae were clubbed like a
butterfly's. At first I thought it was a butterfly that mimicked a moth,
but I had never seen anything like it before.
Next morning I got a glass jar half filled with bruised laurel leaves,
and Ma got it in, and after a day or two I set it, clumsily, and meant
to take it to London, but had no small box to put it in. I told Mr.
Rothschild about it, and he said it sounded like a Castnia--curious
South American moths very near to butterflies. So he got out the drawer
with them, but mine was not there; then he got another drawer
half-empty, and there it was--only a coloured drawing, but exactly like.
It had been described, but neither the Museum nor Mr. Rothschild had got
it! I had had the orchids nearly a year and a half, so it must have
been, in the chrysalis all that time and longer, which Mr. Rothschild
said was the case with the Castnias. On going home I searched, and found
the brown chrysalis-case it had come out of among the roots of the same
orchid the little Longicornes had dropped from. It is, I am pretty sure,
a Brazilian species, and I have written to ask Mr. Hall if he knows
where it came from. I have sent the moth and chrysalis to Prof.
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