52 



revisiting the same spot, at the same hour of the day, for 

 several days in succession. 



How far it roams no man knows. It visits the violas high 

 up on the mountains, it flies along the very sea shore. It 

 dashes into the market-places of the towns, probing the 

 flowers on the stalls, and even those held in the human hand ; 

 it feeds among the choicest blossoms in imperial or royal 

 gardens, and it finds its way to that one solitary pot of 

 geraniums on the window-sill, perhaps the only spot of 

 colour in that dingy back street of the great city. But every- 

 where it exhibits the same rapid, joyous, confident flight. 

 Surely its career is one of triumph ! 



Many times in the gloaming of a summer's evening I 

 have watched the flight of that beautiful little tineid. Tinea 

 cloacella. It will fly gently hither and thither in a quiet 

 corner, almost as if it were a kind of pendulum. It is not 

 seeking its lad3^-love, for then its flight is different ; it is not 

 even searching for food, but simply flying to and fro in idle 

 enjoyment. 



If on one of those delicious days of the merry month of 

 May so often dilated on by the poets, and which most of us 

 have occasionally experienced, we go towards sundown into a 

 meadow where Liizula grows, we shall most probably be able 

 to watch the desultory flight of that grey-green little moth, 

 Glyphipteryx fnscoviriddla. We shall find it sitting crosswise 

 on a bent of grass, moving its wings up and down like fans. 

 Then it flys off, threading its way among the taller grass- 

 stems, till it finds a blade of grass bending over horizontally 

 on a spike of Luzula, on which it can settle in its favourite 

 manner and fan its wings. After a few seconds it will take 

 another flight, and again settle, only to fly off again. Thus it 

 will pass an hour or more, never going very far, but always 

 taking things easy and enjoying the warm, soft air of the late 

 afternoon. 



Stainton appears to have noticed this joy of existence ; for 

 he writes thus of one of the smallest of all moths, Ncpticnla 

 pygmcBclla : " It is a pleasant sight to see this minute insect 

 darting backwards and forwards among the hawthorn-leaves, 

 evidently in the aane of enjoyment " (" Insecta Brit.," 

 p. 296). 



I have mentioned the joyous flight of these species, not 

 because they appear to have an exceptional enjoyment of 

 life, but because they are all common and easily to be ob- 

 served. Many more examples might be cited, and I believe 

 that the same joyous life is common to all species, but I 



