A MINOR CHAMELEON. 163 
flashed to the eyes of a last, lingering, sleepy 
chaffinch. There was a whir and a flap of 
wings, a dart in the air, and the chaffinch 
returned to his perch with the moth in his 
beak. 
Now, it may have been that the chaffinch 
was not hungry, or that the moth had an 
unnice smell. 
Anyway, he laid friend moth on the bough 
between his legs—preparatory to killing it, 
I suppose. The moth lay on its left side, 
wings closed above its back like a butterfly’s, 
legs curled up like the legs of a dead insect. 
But it was not dead. It was only sham- 
ming death. Fraction by fraction it moved, 
one wing first, and then its fellow, while still 
the body lay motionless, with the legs curled 
up as in death, flattened—and was still. The 
moth was now in a position ready to fly. 
Then the chaffinch put down his beak to 
finish the job, and—our magpie-moth had 
gone! 
Insects don’t think—the learned books 
say so! 
