rather the two creatures rush towards one another, and they are at
once locked in a fast embrace. Immediately their wings cease to
flutter, the only commotion on the newspaper being made by the unmated
males. In a hatching-room these males on the stacks of trays are so
numerous that the place is filled with the sound 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