320 PLUMED MOTHS. 



as essential to flight, and serving as much to form its organ, 

 as those in the pinions of the feathered race. 



Who has not noticed, in gardens and by hedge-rows, float- 

 ing towards evening in the summer, an object resembling a 

 large tuft of down, or a snow-flake dropped (a marvel !) from 

 a summer cloud ? When followed to its place of settlement 

 (usually some plant or lowly shrub) this questionable wanderer 

 will prove one of the moths just mentioned, that, probably, 

 designated the " Large White Plume ;"* a little creature (large 

 only by comparison) with wings consisting each of a single 

 row of long quilled feathers of spotless white and silken gloss, 

 the delicate body and slender legs being of the same unsullied 

 hue, contrasted only by large black eyes. This fairy moth, 

 than which few more elegant and graceful flit beneath the 

 moon, comes of a greenish white, dusky-spotted caterpillar, 

 common on the nettles of every hedge ; and the " White 

 Plume " has a cousin, less fair and less in size, but not less 

 beautiful than herself, yclept the " Twenty Plume,"f from the 

 number of separate feathers of which her variegated brown 

 pinions are composed. 



Though of course less conspicuous than the former, the 

 latter is even more easily and frequently to be met with ; for, 

 as if inviting the admiration she so well deserves, this beau- 

 tiful little flutterer often enters our dwellings, and spreads her 

 feather-fans for our inspection as she dances in^the window 



* PteropJtorus pentadactylus, t Aluctta Jiexadactyla. 



