258* INSECTS. 



insect pronounced a Butterfly or a Moth because its 

 colouring is bright or dull. Thus the dull-coloured 

 brown Wood Butterflies are often supposed to be Moths, 

 while the showy Tiger-Moth, with its rich brown and 

 cream-coloured fore-wings, and hind-wings of bright 

 scarlet and blue-black, the beautiful green and red 

 Burnet Moth, and the Peacock-eyed Sphinxes, are called 

 Butterflies. Sometimes, too, size is supposed to settle 

 the question ; and, on this account, the smaller Butter- 

 flies are called Moths, and the large Moths, Butterflies. 

 This, like the appeal to colour, is quite erroneous. As 

 to colour, nocturnal insects of all kinds are usually more 

 soberly coloured than diurnal, and, the Butterflies being 

 diurnal, while the larger number of species of Moths are 

 night-fliers, the former are generally more conspicuously 

 marked and coloured than the latter ; but the white and 

 brown Butterflies, and the numerous gaily-coloured Moths, 

 make any rule, even in this matter, impossible. As to size, 

 the range is much greater in the Moths, our largest 

 Moth, the Death's-Head, sometimes measuring five inches 

 from tip to tip of the expanded wings, while some of 

 the minute leaf-mining Moths are smaller than the 

 common little green Rose-Aphis. The largest Butterfly, 

 on the other hand (the Swallowtail) seldom exceeds four 

 inches, and the smallest, a little blue Butterfly, measures 

 from about three-quarters to one inch. 



Neither size, then, nor colour, will guide us in dis- 

 tinguishing between Moths and Butterflies. 



Moths and Butterflies differ^-first, in the form of 

 their antennae ; secondly, in the position and folding 

 of the wings when at rest; thirdly, very generally in the 

 character of the caterpillar and chrysalis. 



First, the antennae. The two sections of Lepidoptera 



