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 before 

 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 



