278 PLUMED MOTHS. 



row of long quilled feathers of spotless white and silken gloss, 

 the delicate body and slender legs being of the same unsullied 

 hue, contrasted only by large black eyes. This fairy moth, 

 than which few more elegant and graceful flit beneath the 

 moon, comes of a greenish white, dusky-spotted caterpillar, 

 common on the nettles of every hedge ; and the " White 

 Plume" has a cousin, less fair and less in size, but not less 

 beautiful than herself, yclept the "Twenty Plume," 1 from the 

 number of separate feathers of which her variegated brown 

 pinions are composed. 



Though of course less conspicuous than the former, the 

 latter is even more easily and frequently to be met with ; for, 

 as if inviting the admiration she so well deserves, this beau- 

 tiful little flutterer often enters our dwellings, and spreads her 

 feather fans for our inspection as she dances in the window a 

 place of shelter to which she often resorts from the bleak 

 winds of March, or the early frosts of late October; for our 

 little " Twenty Plume," fragile as she looks, is no mere bird 

 of summer. 



Having made allusion to certain moths wherein are alto- 

 gether wanting those merely ornamental appendages, the 

 coloured scales or feathers which usually clothe the wings of 

 their tribe, we must say a little more about them; though 

 that little will here be somewhat out of place, inasmuch as the 

 few " clear-winged " belong more nearly, by habits and other 

 affinities, to the Hawk and Twilight Moths first discoursed 

 of, than to the nocturnal division from which our subjects 

 have been subsequently drawn. 



Towards the end of May there may be seen, sipping honey 

 on the wing, (chiefly, however, in the woods and gardens of 

 Surrey, Kent, and Essex), an insect with a short robust, yel- 

 lowish-olive body, not very dissimilar to that of a drone bee, 

 except that it is distinguished by some terminating rings of 



1 Alucita hexadaciyla. 



