Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/424

410 which, however, was very variable in form. The light flashes or trembles upward, as if it were the light of the sun reflected from a frozen mist in the upper atmosphere.

Feb. 19, 1854. To Fair Haven by river, back by railroad. The large moths apparently love the neighborhood of water, and are wont to suspend their cocoons over the edge of the meadow and river, places more or less inaccessible to men, at least. I saw a button-bush with what, at first sight, looked like the open pods of the locust or of the water asclepias, attached. They were the light, ash-colored cocoons of the Attacus Promethea, with the completely withered and faded leaves wrapped around them, carefully and admirably secured to the twigs by fine silk wound round the leaf stalk and the twig. They add nothing to the strength of the cocoon, being deciduous, but aid in deception. They are taken at a little distance for a few curled and withered leaves left on. Though the particular twigs on which you find some cocoons may never, or very rarely, retain any leaves, there are enough leaves left on other shrubs and trees to warrant the adoption of this disguise. Yet it is startling to think that the inference has in this case been drawn by some mind, that as most other plants retain some leaves, the walker will suspect these also to.