The Life of the Butterfly 
FACTS WITH WHICH WE ARE NOT ALL FAMILIAR ABOUT MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES— 
THE CHARACTERISTICS THAT DISTINGUISH THE DAY FROM THE NIGHT FLIERS 
by Frank E. Lutz, Ph.D. 
Assistant Curator Invertebrate Zoology in the American Museum of Natural History 
Photographs by the Author and by courtesy of Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. 
T HOREAU once wrote: ‘‘We accuse 
savages of worshipping only the bad 
spirit or devil. Though they may distin¬ 
guish both a good and a bad, they regard 
only the one which they fear, worship the 
devil only. We, too, are savages in this, 
doing precisely the same thing. This oc¬ 
curred to me yesterday as I sat in the 
woods admiring the beauty of the blue 
butterfly. We are not chiefly interested in 
birds and insects, for example, as they are 
ornamental to the earth and cheering to 
man, but we spare the lives of the former 
only on condition that they eat more grubs 
than they do cherries, and the only account 
of insects which the State encourages is of 
insects injurious to vegetation.” 
Fortunately this is no longer true. It is 
not yet noon and there have already come 
to my desk three letters asking for the 
names and other information concerning 
insects which are not injurious. Judging 
by the writing, one is from a child who 
has looked up her butterfly in a book and 
decided that it is a species which the book 
says does not occur within two thousand 
miles of the place she found it. 
She wants to know what the trou¬ 
ble is, and doubtless secretly hopes 
that she has found out something 
which the book did not know. 
This is not at all an impossibil¬ 
ity. Saying nothing about the 
rest of the country, there are 
about 15,000 species of insects re¬ 
corded from the vicinity of New 
York City. In the same region 
there are more than 2,000 kinds of 
butterflies and moths. Not only 
are species previously known as 
native only to some other part of 
the world constantly being found 
here, but we are still finding right 
around home, species which are 
new to science. The latter feat 
cannot usually be accomplished by 
the amateur, but there is so much 
still to be found out about even the 
commonest species that anyone 
who watches them may discover 
hitherto unknown facts. Even 
if the facts have already been re¬ 
corded, he who finds them out for 
himself is nevertheless a real ex¬ 
plorer and gets his reward in the 
pleasure of his discovery. 
Children will become enthusiastic naturalists 
if they are encouraged 
Another of my letters is somewhat un¬ 
usual, but encouraging to those who would 
arouse a popular interest in all nature be¬ 
cause it concerns an insect which is neither 
beautiful nor ugly, but just an insect. 
Unfortunately this awakening interest 
occasionally takes another turn. One of 
the characters in a series of recent widely 
read novels is a lady who supports herself 
and gives employment to certain of her 
younger friends by collecting the butter¬ 
flies and moths of her neighborhood. 
These novels are very good fiction, but fic¬ 
tion nevertheless, and along with much 
good that they and similar books have 
done, there has come a bit of harm. It is 
occasionally pathetic. Not long since the 
Museum received a much-battered speci¬ 
men of a Luna moth and a letter from a 
boy of upper New York State who said 
his mother had been reading that some of 
the moths were “worth a lot of money” 
and he hoped this one was and that the 
Museum would pay him for it because he 
would soon be nine years old and he would 
like to get a black pony for his birthday. 
A cripple in Missouri asked if she 
could sell the moths which came to 
the light of her lamp. 
Now, a Luna is one of the most 
expensive of our local insects, yet 
a specimen in perfect condition 
may be had from a dealer for a 
few cents. On the other hand, no 
one who has ever truly seen this 
pale green, gracefully shaped 
creature floating in the moon¬ 
light would, if he could, sell the 
experience for a net full of money. 
Furthermore, if he knows the se¬ 
crets of Luna’s childhood, he will 
spend many happy and healthful 
hours scratching in the leaves at 
the foot of forest trees for Luna 
in her silken winter quarters, and 
will even see beauty—prospective, 
if not present—in the young Luna. 
In this way Luna is actually 
“worth a lot.” 
The graceful flight and harmo¬ 
nious colors of adult butterflies 
have made them the most popular 
of insects, but in their youth their 
appearance is rarely attractive. 
They' are “horrid caterpillars,” 
poisoned by gardeners and 
T he skippers are strong-winged, rather dull colored butterflies 
of swift, erratic flight 
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