2 BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



It is clearly therefore not so superfluous as it might 

 at first otherwise seem, to commence the subject by 

 defining even such a familiar object as a butterfly, and 

 more especially distinguishing it with certainty from 

 moth, the only other creature with which it can well 

 confounded. 



The usual notion of a butterfly is of a gay fluttering 

 thing, whose broad painted wings are covered with a 

 mealy stuff that comes off with handling. This is all 

 very well for a general idea, but the characters that 

 form it are common to some other insects besides but- 

 terflies. Moths and hawk-moths have mealy wings, 

 and are often gaily coloured too ; whilst, on the other 

 hand, some butterflies are as dusky and plain as pos- 

 sible. Thus the crimson- winged Tiger, and Cinnabar 

 moths get the name of butterflies, and the Meadow 

 brown butterfly is as sure to be called a moth. So, as 

 neither colouring nor mealy wings furnish us with the 

 required definition, we must find some concise combina- 

 tion of characters that will answer the purpose. But- 

 terflies, then, are insects with mealy wings, and whose 

 horns (called u antennce") have a clubbed or thickened 

 tip, giving them more or less resemblance to a drum-stick. 

 So the difference in the shape of the antennae is the 

 chief outward mark of distinction between butterflies 

 and moths, the latter having antennae of various shapes, 

 threadlike or featherlike, but never clubbed at the tip. 



Having thus settled how a butterfly is to be recog- 

 nized at sight, let us see what butterfly life is ; how 



