lo! the bright train their radiant wings unfurl.
—anna l. barbauld.
“it seems nothing but butterflies!” cried ruth, running out into the garden as soon as breakfast was over.
“of course,” answered a voice, “the lepidoptera will meet by the summer-house.”
“does that mean butterflies? and oh, please, may i come?”
“yes, to both questions,” was wafted back from the beautiful creature flitting so gracefully on the light warm breeze.
“just like a flower with wings,” thought ruth as, holding belinda closely, she followed as fast as she could go.
indeed, they all seemed like flowers with wings, she decided, as she came into the middle of the gathering.
“it is the most beautiful we have been to yet,” she whispered to belinda, “and i am sure it is going to be the most interesting. i couldn’t begin to count them.”
ruth might well say this, for nearly all the fifty-four families of moths to be found in america north of mexico were represented by at least one member, while there were many from the four families of butterflies and the two families of skippers.
ruth came only just in time, for already one of the moths had begun to speak. he was a handsome fellow, with fore wings in different shades of olive.
“my friends,” he said, “i am called the modest sphinx, and, that being the case, you may imagine how painful it is for me to put myself forward in this way. i have been asked, however, to give you a few general facts. why i am expected to know these facts is, perhaps, because, being a sphinx, i should also be wise. yet i am not the only sphinx here, and, if i remember aright, the old and historic sphinx asked, rather than answered, questions.”
“he uses awfully big words,” ruth whispered to her usual confidant, belinda.
“now to begin,” went on the sphinx, “you know, i suppose, that we belong to the order lepidoptera, which means the scale wings, because the colour of our wings is made by scales so tiny that they are really like dust. we are divided into moths, butterflies, and skippers, and all of us are messengers for the flowers, carrying the precious pollen from blossom to blossom. our children are generally enemies to the plants. they are called caterpillars, and seem to have a great many legs, but really only six of them are true legs and remain when the youngster is full grown. the others are prolegs. there may be two or there may be ten. they help in walking, but are shed with the last skin.”
“alas!” sighed a voice in the corner. “i haven’t any to shed—that is, in the middle of my body.”
ruth turned as mr. looper, otherwise known as the measuring worm, made this remark. she would have asked a question, for mr. looper, rearing his head after his own queer fashion, seemed quite ready to talk, but the sphinx stopped her.
“this is not the time to talk about individual legs,” he said. “we are trying to get at general differences. now there are certain ways in which all moths differ from all butterflies.”
“i should say so,” said miss papilio, a handsome tiger swallowtail. “moths have short, stout bodies, and ours are slender.” and miss papilio circled above them so that all might admire her delicate body and the beauty of her tawny yellow wings, with their gray bands and stripes, and their ends pointed in true swallowtail fashion.
“and here is another difference,” she added, coming to rest with her wings folded together vertically. “we always carry our wings so when we are not flying. you moths hold yours horizontally, or sloping. never upward.”
“well, that’s true,” said the sphinx, “and you know we generally have beautiful feathery antennæ, though i, and a few others, are an exception to that rule, but you butterflies can boast only very thread-like antennæ, with a knob at the end.”
“enough about that subject,” spoke up miss papilio. “what i am wondering about is why moths like to fly at night, or in the twilight. now, butterflies must have sunshine.”
“we love the cool, soft night, i can’t tell you why,” answered the sphinx, “and we sleep through the noisy day.”
“but it is so dangerous to sleep as you do, when birds and other nuisances are up and doing.”
“well, birds are pests, there is no doubt about it, and if it hadn’t been for them we insects would have possessed the earth long ago, but you forget, we always choose a place that is nearly the colour of ourselves, and we look so much like our surroundings that it would take a sharp eye to find us. we are not brightly coloured, as a rule, like the butterflies, or if we wear gay colours at all it is usually on our hind wings, which we hide under the fore wings. now the general remarks being made, the audience may view the exhibits and hear their individual histories.”
ruth was up in a second.
“i must talk to that funny measuring worm,” she said to herself. “why, where is he?” she added, standing before the bush on which she had seen him a while before.
“right here,” answered what ruth thought was a twig, and which proved to be none other than mr. looper himself, who raised his head and began to walk on his hind legs in his own eccentric fashion. indeed, not only he, but a number of other mr. loopers, all showing themselves in different positions.
“smart children, aren’t they?” asked some moths, variously coloured in black and brown and yellow, hovering above the tree where the loopers were feeding. “they are ours—that is, not exactly ours, but ours will be like them when they are hatched. these fellows will soon make little cradles of leaves and go into the ground to go to sleep, and when they come out they will be like us. wonderful, isn’t it?”
“yes,” agreed ruth, “but i’d like to know about their legs.”
“i can explain that,” said mr. looper quickly. “i have no legs in the middle of my body, and as that part of me isn’t supported, i can’t walk like other caterpillars, for i am a caterpillar, even if they do call me a worm.”
“the legs, or the want of them, is a fault of his ancestors no doubt,” interrupted a voice. “probably they walked in his idiotic fashion for fun, or to be different, even when they did have the right number of legs, and so lost the use of them, and the legs, too, finally. that often happens. i could tell you of cases——”
“why, you look something like miss papilio,” said ruth, turning to the last speaker, and interrupting her reminiscences.
“i am a miss papilio,” was the answer, “but not the one you heard a while ago. she was a tiger swallowtail, while i am a black swallowtail, different, but quite as handsome in my way. we swallowtails all believe in dressing well. we are butterflies, not moths, but though i am so beautiful, i serve some very humble plants. i carry the precious pollen for them. my children, i’m afraid, will not be so helpful, but what can one do? i happen to like honey, but they prefer the leaves of parsley, carrot, celery, and such things. they have large appetites, too.”
“everything seems to have an appetite,” said ruth.
“well, my children will be able to eat, i can tell you. see, i have laid my eggs on this bed of parsley. ah! there’s a larva now. not mine, but mine will be like it. see, he is green, ringed with black and yellow. 206if you tease him he will stick out his yellow horns at you, and you won’t like the odour either. would you believe i was once like that, and i slept in a pupa case like the one under the twig there? you know there always comes a time in the life of every caterpillar, if he lives long enough of course, when he stops eating for good and wants nothing so much as to sleep. that came to me, and i crawled from the parsley bed to an old rail fence and began to spin. the silk was in my body, and it came through two tubes in my lower lip.”
“that isn’t the way spiders spin,” said ruth. “they——”
“i was not a spider,” said miss papilio. “i was a caterpillar, and they always spin with their mouths. so that is what i did, and before long i had lashed myself securely to the fence by strong silken loops. then i shed my pretty suit, and my skin shrivelled until it was a hard case. in that safe cradle i went to sleep, and came out in the spring with six legs instead of sixteen, a slender tongue in place of sharp, hungry jaws, and, best of all, four beautiful wings. oh, the joy of sailing through wonderful space, and sipping nectar from the sweetest flowers!”
“we have all felt that way,” said a large red-brown butterfly, whose wings, lighter below, were veined and bordered by black, with a double row of white spots on the edges. “look at the chrysalis from which i came, and say no more. can you guess my name?”
ruth was obliged to confess that she could not.
“i have often seen you though,” she added, “or butterflies just like you.”
“probably you have. i am called the monarch, and, frail as i look, i can fly hundreds of miles without resting. i was just laying some eggs on this milkweed, and since you are here, you might use your eyes a little. you may see something worth while.”
ruth was using her eyes as best she could, and soon she spied a number of caterpillars chewing away upon the milkweed leaves. they were lemon or greenish-yellow, banded with black.
“will they grow into butterflies like you?” she asked.
“yes,” was the answer, “but there is something more to see.”
again ruth looked, and now saw what appeared to be a little green jewel dotted with golden nails.
“oh!” she cried, “how lovely!”
“i thought you would say that,” and the monarch fluttered her wings proudly. “that is our chrysalis, the cradle in which we sleep for our great transformation. that is one thing the viceroy can’t do, though she mimics us as much as possible.”
“mimics you?” repeated ruth, in surprise.
“yes, certainly. you see we monarchs are wrapped in a magic perfume—that no birds like, and so they never try to eat us. now, mrs. viceroy hasn’t this perfume, and to protect herself she tries to imitate our family colours, so that the birds, mistaking her for one of us, may leave her alone too. she even flies as we do. see her over there? she is smaller than i am, but quite like me, except for the black line on her hind wings. a careless observer would scarcely notice that, however.”
the monarch floated off to lay some more eggs, and ruth found herself in the midst of ever so many tawny brown butterflies, all bordered and checkered with black, and having wings covered with silver spots.
“oh, you are so lovely!” she cried, with shining eyes, and then, as they passed on, calling back their name, “fritillaries!” “fritillaries!” she turned to see many other dazzling creatures fluttering about her. some she had never seen before, but others were like old friends. there were the meadow browns, the stout-bodied coppers, the slender, beautiful blues, and more white cabbage butterflies than she could count. the handsome red admiral flirted with the pretty painted lady, and the mourning cloaks, with their purple-brown wings, yellow-bordered and marked with light blue spots, were flitting about, telling everybody how they had slept all winter as butterflies, which is most uncommon in the butterfly world, and were for that reason the first to show themselves in the spring.
“i used to wonder why you were out so early,” said ruth, “and once i found one of you in a crevice on a winter day, and i couldn’t understand about it.”
“well, you do now. we hibernate like many animals.”
“but you must have been eggs in the beginning,” said ruth. “the oil beetle told me that all insects begin as eggs. and will you please tell me how a butterfly knows the right kind of plant to lay her eggs on? it always seems to be just the one her caterpillars like to eat. she doesn’t eat it herself.”
“of course not,” answered one of the mourning cloaks. “you need but look at out tongues to see that we eat only honey. i can’t answer your question, for none of us knows. something tells us the proper plant for our eggs. we lay them there without hesitation, and we lay a great many. this is necessary, for one never knows what may happen. most of them may make a meal for something before they even hatch into caterpillars, and if some miss this fate, and do hatch, there are any number of birds, and their enemies, who like nothing so well as a fat, juicy caterpillar for dinner. then if that danger is escaped, there are the birds again, and other hungry things, all anxious to get a taste of the butterfly. so you can understand that in a life so full of accidents it is important to have many eggs to begin with.”
“yes,” said ruth, “but——”
she didn’t finish, for just then she put her hand on what she thought was a leaf, and, much to her surprise, she found that it was alive.
