INTRODUCTORY. 



soaring butterfly ! I wish my readers to 

 regard it as many of our poets and philo- 

 sophers have done. The caterpillar, greedy, 

 crawling, toiling for its very life, much re- 

 sembles a man in his daily occupations ; the 

 chrysalis has no power to move, eat, or act in 

 any way, and many actually bury themselves 

 in the ground and there await the tLvnge to 

 a butterfly, resembling man when dead and in 

 his grave. Lastly comes the butterfly, burst- 

 ing from its prison-house, and borne trom 

 place to place on beautiful wings. So is it 

 appointed for the man who has walked up- 

 rightly on the earth, to rise from the tomb 

 and ascend, a happy spirit, to regions of bliss. 

 (See the prelude of mottoes with which I 

 have prefaced these observations.) 



Butterflies and moths together constitute a 

 great and principal class of insects, which is 

 called Scale Wings, or Lepidoptera, ; each in- 

 dividual possesses four wings, all of which are 

 covered with scales. 



I will now explain, as well as I am able, 

 how to know a butterfly from a moth. In 

 the first place, a butterfly always flies in the 

 daytime. In the second place, it always rests 

 by night, and almost always in rainy or cloudy 

 weather. In the third place, when it is rest- 

 ing, it raises its wings, in some instances 

 pressing them together back to back, so that 

 the four wings look only like two wings, as 

 shown at page 2 at the end of the mottoes : but 

 a moth turns its wings downwards instead of 

 upwards, folding them round its body. Again, 

 the hind wings of a butterfly are stiff, and you 

 cannot fold them up ; but the hind wings of a 

 moth are almost invariably neatly folded up 

 lengthwise, and quite hidden beneath the fore 

 wings. Then, again, both butterflies and 

 moths have two feelers attached to the head, 

 just in frontof the eyes ; we call them antennae, 

 and you will see them in every figure in the 

 following pages. These in different insects 

 are of different shapes ; but in butterflies they 

 generally have a little knob at the end. Then 

 there is something else about the antennae 

 that is a still better guide to you than the 

 knob at the end ; and that is, that the owner 

 cannot stow them away or hide them; whether 



the butterfly is asleep or awake, its antenna* 

 are always stretched out in front, or held 

 quite upright. Now a moth, when going to 

 sleep, turns it antennae under its wing, or 

 conceals them in some similar manner, both 

 from observation and from injury. Again, 

 the eyes of a butterfly are very much larger 

 than those of a moth, because the butterfly 

 flies by day. The waist of a butterfly is 

 nipped in, making the division into thorax 

 and body very distinct ; but there isnosuch dis- 

 tinct division in a moth : and hence the butter- 

 flies are called Pedunculated Lepidoptera (in 

 science Lepidoptera PeduncvJata), and the 

 moths, Sessile-bodied Lepidoptera (in science 

 Lepidoptera Hessiliventres). If you attend to 

 all these differences, you will soon learn to 

 distinguish at first sight an English butterfly 

 from an English moth. No sooner, how- 

 ever, does the entomologist become acquainted 

 with exotic butterflies and moths, than he 

 finds exceptions and difficulties arise which 

 scientific writers have rendered almost in- 

 superable by the diversity of their opinions 

 and the extreme skill with which they have 

 been urged. On this subject it will be un- 

 availing to enter here. It will be sufficient 

 for me to say that the scientific are equally 

 divided in opinion whether the insects belong- 

 ing to the most magnificent order of sun-loving 

 Lepidoptera I mean the Uranitcs should be 

 regarded as butterflies or moths. My own 

 opinion is decidedly in favour of considering 

 them butterflies; but then it is an opinion 

 only, so I will not urge it, but proceed to 

 introduce a few general observations on butter- 

 fly life in its four different stages. 



THE EGG STATE. 

 It is a most interesting occupation to watcb 

 the female depositing her eggs, and to observe 

 the extraordinary sagacity she displays in 

 selecting the leaf proper for the food of the 

 future caterpillar. In a hedge or coppice, 

 densely crowded with every kind of native 

 shrub, the Emperor selects the sallow, the 

 White Admiral the honeysuckle, and the 



