Might I not, legitimately, have expected the Carnegie Educational
Medal for all this? I have never received it. I say this without
indignation--even without sorrow. I merely make the statement.
Yet, my system was really a very beautiful system; a tiny batch of eggs
would arrive from Ceylon, or Sumatra, or Africa; when taken from cold
storage and placed in the herbarium they would presently hatch; the
caterpillars were fed with their accustomed food-plant--a few leaves
being taken from cold storage every day for them--they would pass through
their three or four moulting periods, cease feeding in due time,
transform into the chrysalis stage, and finally appear in all the
splendour and magnificence of butterfly or moth.
The great glass flying-cage was now alive with superb moths and
butterflies, flitting, darting, fluttering among the flowering bushes
or feeding along the sandy banks of the brook which flowed through
the flying-cage, bordered by thickets of scented flowers. And it was
like looking at a meteoric shower of winged jewels, where the huge
metallic-blue _Morphos_ from South America flapped and sailed, and the
orange and gold and green _Ornithoptera_ from Borneo pursued their
majestic, bird-like flight--where big, glittering _Papilios_ flashed
through the bushes or alighted nervously to feed for a few moments
on jasmine and phlox, and where the slowly flopping _Heliconians_ winged
their way amid the denser tangles of tropical vegetation.
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