CHAPTER II. 

 NIGHT-BUTTERFLIES AND DAY-MOTHS. 



MOTHS are somehow supposed to be the poor relations of 

 butterflies. When people who care little about such matters 

 see a prettily coloured insect flying by, they say, " Look at 

 that butterfly," but if it be dingy or insignificant in size they 

 call it "a moth." Here, then, as everywhere else, the old 

 fallacy "from authority" maintains its force. Holy Writ 

 has damned the moth. So superstition and folklore ap- 

 proach it prejudiced. And Poetry, which used always to 

 go to Holy Writ and Folklore for its natural history, falls 

 into the ditch with its leaders. 



But there is, of course, no ground for this invidious 

 distinction between the butterfly and the moth. It is true 

 that night-flying things, dusky things, do not commend 

 themselves to general admiration with the same immediate 

 attractiveness as those that delight in sunshine. The bat, 

 being crepuscular entre chien et loup is a creature of 

 shocking possibilities. Victor Hugo apostrophises it as a 

 bird. Most poets call it "obscene." So, too, the owl, and 

 the night-jar, and the "night raven" that most delicious 

 of all poetical bogies, invented by poets for their own 

 titillation, just as children like to get themselves into the 

 " creeps " by pretending an imaginary bear or giant under 

 the bed. 



They are all odious because they are of the twilight and 



the darkness, silent-flighted, mysterious in the gloaming. 



178 



