THE GHOST MOTH. 



comes the prey of every bird that feeds by night ; 

 his colour and his actions rendering him particularly 

 obnoxious to dangers of this nature, and the fre- 

 quency with which we find his wings scattered about, 

 points out the cause of death to most of them. The 

 bat pursues with great avidity all those creatures 

 that fly in the evening ; and by its actions it seems 

 to meet with constant employment, and has greater 

 probability of success, than some insectivorous 

 birds that feed by day, as all the myriads which 

 abound at this time are the sole prey of itself and a 

 few nocturnal ramblers. From this singular flight 

 in the twilight hour, haunting as it were one parti- 

 cular spot, the fancy of some collector, considering 

 it as a spectrelike action, named it the " ghost moth." 

 The fern owl, but chiefly, I conjecture, the 

 larger bats, are the creatures that have caused me 

 to experience at times both envy and regret, when I 

 have observed scattered in some woodland path, 

 amidst the fragments of their nightly banquet, the 

 relics of such beautiful insects as the emperor of 

 the woods, the verdigris moth, and twenty other 

 rare insects, to be obtained only after the patience 

 of years, or fortune of the hour ; and yet our merci- 

 less birds devour these choice dainties without com- 

 punction or regard. This ghost moth discharges 

 her eggs in a very singular manner, and frequently 

 immediately upon capture, not deliberately pro- 

 truding them, but dismissing them from the oviduct 

 in rapid succession, until it is exhausted, with a 



