THE RAILWAY EMBANKMENT 



97 



friend says he thinks it is because they 

 cannot sleep through the noise of the 

 goods trains crashing and thundering 

 all night. Noise is a stimulant to song 

 with birds, and I have suggested that 

 it may be the river which makes the 

 sedge warbler so songful by night and 

 day. But it is just worth considering 

 as a theory, not more. 



The railway embankment is as fa- 

 voured by butterflies and day-flying 

 moths this June as I found it last 

 year. The lovely little heath moth has 

 been out in numbers since the begin- 

 ning of the month. It has none of the 

 brave apparel of the wood tiger and 

 the cinnabar moths which also fly by 

 day along the slope, being a greyish 

 little thing, flaccid almost as the snow- 

 white plume moth, but far warier 

 than he. The pattern on the upper 

 wings of the heath, yellowish with 

 wavy brown stripes, is neat as neat 

 can be : to describe it truly you want 

 language fine and pointed as an etch- 

 ing pen, a tongue of diminutives. 



The flight of the heath moth is not 

 so weak as one might expect from 

 such limp-looking wings and body, 

 but it is highly erratic, like that of 

 many moths and butterflies with thin 

 bodies and wings that seem as if they 

 had no muscles to work them. Like 

 the " carpet " moths and notably 



the orange tip and the white butter- 

 flies, the heath moth zig-zags along. 

 The movements, on the wing, of an 

 orange-tip butterfly and a small bird- 

 say a chaffinch or a larger one say 

 a green woodpecker are so entirely 

 unlike that one may wonder whether 

 the same principles are here at work. 

 The bird seems to bound through the 

 air in a clean curve, the butterfly 

 apparently can only go forward by 

 quick little flutterings to right and left : 

 to make progress the orange-tip or cab- 

 bage white must ceaselessly bob from 

 side to side. With the butterfly we 

 see nothing of the springs, the rise 

 and fall of the body in the air, the 

 clean, distinct closing of the wings 

 between the leaps. 



The heath moth and the orange- 

 tip butterfly get along somehow, can 

 fly against a little breeze, as with 

 it, but there really seems and here, 

 of course, is deception to be no more 

 machinery about their flight than 

 about that of a flimsy scrap of paper 

 upheld and buffeted about by gusts 

 of wind. This is not so with all 

 moths and butterflies, nor with beetles 

 on the wing, many flying clean and 

 straight. 



Another curious style of flight is to 

 be seen on the railway slope. Mother 

 Shipton's likeness is out, and when 



8 



