138 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



name. " Its food plant in the North has not yet been discovered," 

 says a prominent entomologist. Look to your hollyhocks, altheas, 

 and mallows, my scientific friend, for here you will certainly find 

 the recluse in congenial company. Here is the little " gourd " ex- 

 pert, a tiny moth that shows no evidence of inherited dyspepsia, 

 though its broods devour indiscriminately the leaves and green 

 fruit of cucumber, watermelon, gourd, muskmelon, pumpkin, squash, 

 and wild star-cucumbers, all of the Melon family. The imported 

 silk-worm, it is said, will starve on most substitutes offered in 

 place of its native food, the mulberry, but is found to thrive on 

 the Osage orange why? For the same intuitive reason that 

 many species of butterflies which feed exclusively on grasses rec- 

 ognize a grass in the sugar-cane and Indian-corn. 



We have noted various specialists in quite a list of botanical 

 orders. This buzzing humming-bird-like moth which now whirls 

 about our evening lamps is a reminder of another instructive 

 instance of botanical skill. It is a Hawk-moth, or Sphinx, a name 

 applied by Linnaeus to a class of moths noted for the strange 

 arch attitude of their caterpillars; but the name is further borne 

 out in their attributes of wisdom. Of these, one group has been 

 named by Harris, Philampelus " I love the vine." " I love the 

 Vitis" or its classic equivalent, would have been nearer the mark, 

 for all this tribe of sphinxes, of which I recall five familiar ex- 

 amples, are equally fond of the grape and the Virginia-creeper, or 

 "five-leaved ivy," as it is sometimes called. On these two plants 

 only are the insects found. What shall we infer from this cir- 

 cumstance? That these plants are the only two native genera 

 in the order Vitacete an inference which we find is sustained in 

 our botany. 



Not many years since, however, a prominent florist imported 

 a new and beautiful exotic vine a native of Japan, a luxuriant, 

 close-clinging, rapid climber which met with great popular favor, 

 and which now completely embowers many of our metropolitan 

 churches, and even private dwellings, clambering from basement 

 to cornice during a period of three or four years. In appearance 

 it is as much like an ivy as anything else indeed, quite ivy-like 



