386 ' THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hand-book. My experience is, that simplicity is the most necessary 

 guide for the collector, whether in the field or closet. A few tools 

 and some cork-lined boxes will accomplish a great deal in the hands of 

 an expert, while the expensive paraphernalia of the novice will fail of 

 adequate result. As a rule, the most pleasure and information are 

 yielded to the student who gradually increases his stores from his own 

 catching, who follows the moths into their retreats, and by his indus- 

 try and pertinacity compels Nature to yield to him a measure of her 

 secrets. 



Long ago I remember catching moths one summer night in the 

 country, back of Newburg, on the Hudson. What a lovely and per- 

 fect night it was ! A sheen lay over the grass, and the field-daisies 

 stood tall and pale and spectral in the moonlight. Their white flowers 

 looked like silver crowns, waiting for some love-sick damsel to pluck 

 and gather her fate from the number of their petals. They stood in 

 silver and gold, without envying the yellow and brown daisies of the 

 meadows which were hardly open yet. The air was traversed by 

 leather-winged bats, also out after insects, and I felt convicted by 

 being in their company. A pale-green moon -moth fluttered by the 

 skirt of the dark wood, the long " tails " to her wings trailing like the 

 court-dress of a queen. I stayed my hand and let her sweep by, hop- 

 ing that those marauding bats might not espy her as she floated in the 

 night-air, heavy with the scent of roses. For aught I saw, she escaped 

 them, and the peril of having her white body devoured, her green 

 wings clipped from her shoulders, falling idly, like the petals of dying 

 flowers, upon the ground. 



Painters have not yet learned all they can from the coloring of 

 moths. Some moths are pale-pink and yellow, only these two colors, 

 reminding one of apple-blossoms and yellow moonlight. I saw a panel 

 of C. Colman's once, for the contrast of colors of which it seemed he 

 must have studied the wings of moths. As the musician can use the 

 songs of birds, so the painter may copy the colors of the moths for our 

 greater pleasure and his own benefit. A great deal may be said of the 

 unconscious schooling we get from Nature. 



" All sorts and conditions of men " and not a few talented and ac- 

 complished women are among the American students and collectors 

 of moths. Before the last quarter of a century, those who interested 

 themselves in America with this department of our fauna were few, 

 and those who published the results of their investigations might be 

 counted on the fingers of one hand. Harris in Massachusetts, Fitch in 

 New York, Kirtland in Ohio, Gosse in Canada, were the best known. 

 Thomas Say, of Philadelphia, published two species in his "American 

 Entomology." But since that time, Professor Packard, Professor Fer- 

 nald, Mr. Henry Edwards, Mr. F. Pepper, Mr. Lintner, and a number 

 of talented writers, have become familiar names to those interested in 

 the subject in the pages of its literature. The " New York Entomo- 



