238 PERENNIALS 



life into the garden because my subject is perennial flowers. But 

 we can use some of these to lure interesting creatures. In the 

 "American Flower Garden" Neltje Blanchan gives a list of red 

 flowers with long tubes that will attract the humming bird. It 

 includes bee balm, wild red columbine, cardinal flower, and 

 Coquelicot phlox. 



Very much like humming birds are the hawk moths, which 

 fly at dusk and are sometimes called humming bird moths. These 

 you can attract by having plenty of fragrant white flowers with 

 long tubes. I have seen a dozen of these gorgeous creatures 

 hovering over masses of the phlox called Miss Lingard. Nico- 

 tianas and honeysuckles will draw the largest and showiest moths, 

 such as the Luna, Cecropia, Cynthia, and Imperial. 



However, moths are night fliers and therefore not so important 

 as the butterflies, which animate a garden by day. Among the 

 largest and most gorgeous of these are the swallowtails, which visit 

 a great variety of flowers. Violets attract the butterflies known 

 as fritillaries. Snapdragons attract the nymph which the entomol- 

 ogists call the "buckeye." The enthusiast who desires further 

 suggestions along this line may glean them from Comstock's 

 "How to Know the Butterflies." There is one plant worth having 

 in every garden because it is habitually covered with more butter- 

 flies at a time than any other I know. This is the blazing star or 

 the Kansas gay feather (Liatris Pycnostachya). 



Lafcadio Hearn has a delightful study of the musical insects 

 of Japan, which are raised and sold in cages. More practical for 

 us is Mrs. Comstock's chapter on "Pipers and Minnesingers" in 

 "Ways of the Six-footed." The finest singers among the insects 

 are the bees. The quaint old beehives in English gardens are not 

 only picturesque but furnish a mellow and soothing hum. Bees 



