CHAPTER XIV 
THE MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES (Order Lepidoptera) 
OTHS and butterflies are the insects most 
favored of collectors and nature lovers; a 
German amateur would call them the “Lieb- 
lings-insekten.” The beautiful color patterns, 
the graceful flight and dainty flower-haunting habits, and the interesting 
metamorphosis in their life-history make them very attractive, while the com¬ 
parative ease with which the various species may be determined, and the 
large number of popular as well as more technical accounts of their life 
which are accessible for information, render the moths and butterflies most 
available, among all the insects, for systematic collecting and study by 
amateurs. 
Despite the large number of species in the order (6622 are recorded in 
the latest catalogue of the North American forms) and the great variety in 
size and pattern, the order is an unusually homogeneous one, even a begin¬ 
ning student rarely mistaking a moth for an insect of any other order, or 
classifying a non-lepidopterous insect in this order. A few aberrant species 
are wingless (females only) and a few (certain “ clear-winged ” species) have 
a superficial likeness to wasps and bumblebees, but the general habitus of 
any Lepidopteron, let alone the readily determinable and absolutely diag¬ 
nostic character of the scale-covering on the wings, usually indicates unmis¬ 
takably the affinities of any moth or butterfly. 
The diagnostic structural characters are the (already mentioned) pres¬ 
ence on upper and lower sides of both wings (as well as over the surface of 
the body) of a covering of small symmetrically formed scales, which are 
modified hairs, and to which all of the color and pattern of the insects are 
due. In Chapter XVII will be found a detailed account of these scales, 
explaining their structure, their origin, and how they produce the color pat¬ 
terns. The wings themselves are almost always present (in two pairs), the 
fore wings larger than the hind wings, and with a characteristic venation, 
in which the modifications, though small, are yet so constant and definite 
that they are used successfully as the principal basis for the classification 
of the order into families. Another characteristic is the highly modified 
and peculiar condition of the mouth-parts. While in some species the mouth- 
parts are rudimentary (atrophied) and evidently not functional, in most 
there is a well-developed slender flexible sucking proboscis (Fig. 509) com- 
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