BEAUTIFUL HAWK-MOTHS = 221 
for all the glittering scale-like feathers, seemed so 
perfectly beautiful as our dark crimson underwing. 
On the third evening, to our regret, we succeeded 
in getting him to fly out. 
Now, we asked, what had the books - about- 
moths-makers to tell us concerning this particular 
elf-darling? I proceeded to get out my work on 
Butterflies and Moths—one recently published. 
It gave a description of the insect—colour and 
measurements; then, under the heading of “ general 
remarks,” came the following: “This moth will 
never be seen, but by judicious sugaring as many 
as half-a-dozen specimens may be obtained in a 
single night.” That was all! It was a shock to 
us, and we wondered whether any of our naturalists 
had tried the plan of “ judicious sugaring” to 
obtain a few specimens of that rarer, more elusive 
creature, the fairy, before its final extinction in 
Britain. 
The memory of those two evenings with a 
crimson underwing brings to mind just now yet 
another enchanting evening I spent in the valley 
of the Wiltshire Avon. It was June, just beforc 
hay-cutting, and for most of the time, until the 
last faint underglow had faded and the stars were 
out, I was standing motionless, knee-deep in the 
plumy seeded grasses, watching the ghost-moths, 
‘as I had never seen them before, in scores and in 
hundreds, dimly visible in their whiteness all over 
the dusky meadow, engaged in their quaint, beauti- 
ful, rhythmic love-dance. It was the wide silent 
