THE DAY OF THE MOTH 101 



window upon the light in an almost unbroken procession. 

 Yet no extraordinary frenzy really seizes them on these 

 crowded nights. The number of the visitors indoors is only 

 proportionate to the multitudes which are stirring out in the 

 garden and over the uncut hay-fields. They are drawn 

 abroad in greatest numbers by the warmest and dimmest 

 nights, especially about midsummer, which is even more the 

 heyday of moths than of butterflies. The same dark, warm 

 nights draw out the perfume of the night-scented flowers 

 most richly ; the flowers and the moths which unconsciously 

 mate the blossoms are stimulated alike by the warm 

 nocturnal air. 



Many of the blossoms sought by moths have a heady 

 sweetness, so that it is after all not surprising that a number 

 of moths can be attracted by smearing trees and walls with 

 mixtures of beer, sugar, and rum. But these unctuous doses 

 do not appeal to every species ; and collectors know well 

 which moths will ' come to sugar,' and which must be 

 hunted in other ways. Sugar as the various mixtures are 

 collectively known to the fancy will entirely fail to attract a 

 large number of species, and is chiefly attractive to noctuae. 

 On the other hand, some moths are seldom caught in any 

 other way. August brings out in gardens and shrubberies 

 the copper underwing a rather large noctua of which the 

 underwings are of a burnished coppery-brown. It is often 

 fairly abundant, but is likely to be entirely overlooked 

 until sugar is tried, whereupon specimens will turn up 

 regularly every night. Some moths, such as the herald and 

 old lady, seem to have the tastes of anchorites, and are 

 seldom found anywhere but in retired corners in sheds and 

 outhouses. The herald's slate and orange wings, with a 

 white thread stretched across them, are very commonly seen 

 folded at rest on a wall in some dusky retreat, but now and 



