COMMON BRITISH MOTHS 
CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION—HINTS ON REARING LARVE— 
SEARCHING FOR PUP 
Tue life-histories and physical characteristics of butter- 
flies and moths indicate that they are both members ot 
the same great order of Insects, the Lepidoptera (Greek, 
lepis, a scale; pieron, a wing), their wings being 
covered with fine scales, As has been stated in my 
“British Butterflies,” in the “ Peeps at Nature ” series, 
butterflies may be distinguished as day-flyers, whereas 
the moths usually fly by night. The main physical 
difference between the two sections of the Lepidoptera 
is discoverable in the forms of their antennz, or horns ; 
in the butterflies these are club-shaped at their extreme 
ends, whereas in the moths they show much diversity of 
form. Both butterflies and moths have the same use in 
Nature: on the one hand, their larvee restrict vegetation 
by eating it; on the other hand, the insects help to insure 
its continuance by transmitting the fertilizing pollen from 
flower to flower, much in the same manner as the bees, 
If at times some of the Lepidoptera, by becoming too 
abundant and destructive, call for suppression, others, 
such as the silk-producing moths, merit our esteem - 
for the great quantities of silk they spin, 
C.B.M. I 
