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STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



the creeping blue-flowered periwinkle or "myrtle "of our gardens. 

 Another black and yellow individual, whose name I do not know, 

 is true to the Madder family. Another takes the pine, spruce, 

 and hemlock in its exclusively conifer diet. The Sphinx Cinerea 

 has disclosed itself to me on ash, lilac, the cultivated fringe-tree, 

 and privet a consecutive lesson in botany which was committed 

 to memory, and verified by my manual in the Olive family. 



There is a beautiful moth known as the rosy Dryocampa. I 

 have found its black -horned caterpillars on sugar- maples, silver 

 and red maples, and one day discovered it also on the box -elder. 

 How did this little moth know that this ash -leaved bough of 

 spring was only a maple in masquerade ? Who but a skilled bot- 

 anist could ever have identified it? What the Dryocampa does 

 for the maples the Thisbe butterfly does for the "arrow -woods," 

 and the Phaeton and Lavinia butterflies for the figworts. The 

 white snowball of our shrubberies is a favorite haunt of the for- 

 mer insect, but it finds the nannyberry-bush an equally attractive 

 Viburnum, while the painted-cup, snake-head, and toad-flax form 

 the principal choice of the last two insects, which preside over 

 the family Schrophulariaceee. Among the more modest wild flow- 

 ers we find the same revelation. The violets have a whole brood 

 of faithful dependants. The handsome silver -spotted Aphrodite 

 butterfly knows that the tall yellow violet of the woods is only a 

 less conspicuous cousin to the blue "bird -foot" species, and that 

 the pansy is only a vain descendant of the wild "Johnny jumper" 

 of past ages, which the progenitor of all the aphrodites sought 

 for the care of its offspring. 



I remember once, when a lad, observing a very strange slug 

 caterpillar upon a skunk - cabbage leaf, and subsequently discov- 

 ered it again on the sweet-flag, or calamus, little dreaming the bo- 

 tanical significance of the event, for both of these herbs are in 

 the Arum family a striking instance of the wide, outward dis- 

 similarity which often exists between allied species. We have 

 already noted, for instance, the affinity between the elm and the 

 nettle, the puss clover and the locust-tree. In further illustration, 

 there would seem to be no greater gap possible in the vegetable 



