GILDED MOTHS. 



271 



most justly to vie with the diamond-beetle and the humming- 

 bird in the rich metallic colours which bespangle their wings. 

 We thought, indeed, till recently, that these " tiny miracles 

 of nature " were without a match for splendour in their kind ; 

 but in July, 1847, we lighted on a family of little moths 

 (large, though, as compared with leaf-miners) more profusely 

 laden still with the seeming precious metal. We were prying, 

 according to our wont, into one of our mines of insect trea- 

 sure the bark, namely, of a birch-tree,* when we perceived 

 on its silvery surface what seemed a little patch of veritable 

 gold : and, in truth, a splash fresh from the crucible of the 

 richest and the reddest could not have surpassed in hue the 

 wings of the little moth which, till more closely scrutinized, 

 wore its resemblance. Of these, the upper ones were almost 

 wholly covered by burnished gilding, but slightly variegated 

 with opake white and fringed with gold. The insect being at 

 rest, the superior pinions were alone visible, overlapping the 

 inferior ones of dark silken gray. Having first secured, in a 

 convenient pill-box, this gilded fairy, we sought where we had 

 found her, in hopes of falling in with one or more of her be- 

 dizened fellows. Not a bit of it ; but, on curiously pulling 

 off a fragment of the birchen bark, partially detached by time 

 or weather, we discovered, imbedded in its inner face, some 

 dozen of small white cocoons a few emptied of their recent 

 occupants, of which the remainder were yet to come forth. 



* At Highgate. 



