288 SWALLOW-TAIL MOTH. 



breeze. Scarcely less elegant, and somewhat resembling them 

 in shape and hue, are the wings of our Swallow-tail rnoth, 

 sprung of the walking branch. So, if we may fairly liken the 

 earliest of our spring papilons to a primrose of the day, we 

 may quite as justly compare our graceful flitter through the 

 summer twilight to a primrose of the evening. 



The prevailing hue of the above and other branch-like 

 crawlers, found not unfrequently on the oak, elm, and other 

 trees, is brown, varied, like bark, with tints of green and 

 gray ; thus, in their colouring as well as in their dry rigidity 

 of outline, corresponding to their name of walking-branches ; 

 but there are a few much more delicate and tender-looking 

 sprigs of the same family, which would be better designated 

 by that of walking-sfofe Of this kind is a slender green 

 Looper which, in the months of May and June, we have found 

 feeding on the leaflets of the rose, or stretched out motionless, 

 at some angle with the ravaged leaf-stalk, which it then ex- 

 actly mimics. When this rampant stalk becomes a quiet chry- 

 salis, self-suspended to a branch, it still retains its colour of 

 bright vernal green, exchanged for orange and brown when 

 it emerges, a pretty moth. 



So much for walking-frrancAes of British growth ; neither, 

 as aforesaid, is a walking-Zee/ a wonder to be seen alive only 

 in foreign parts. "We must wait, perhaps, till the arrival of 

 July ; but then, if, with eyes prepared, we look amongst the 

 foliage of a mingled hedge, we are likely to detect, on a 



