CHAPTER II MOTHS, EGGS, CATERPILLARS, WINTER QUARTERS
If you are too fastidious to read this chapter, it
will be your permanent loss, for it contains the life
history, the evolution of one of the most amazingly
complicated and delicately beautiful creatures in
existence. There are moths that come into the
world, accomplish the functions that perpetuate their
kind, and go out, without having taken any nourishment.
There are others that feed and live for a season.
Some fly in the morning, others in the glare of
noon, more in the evening, and the most important class
of big, exquisitely lovely ones only at night.
This explains why so many people never have seen
them, and it is a great pity, for the nocturnal,
non-feeding moths are birdlike in size, flower-like
in rare and complicated colouring, and of downy,
silent wing.
The moths that fly by day and feed are of the Sphinginae
group, Celeus and Carolina, or Choerocampinae, which
includes the exquisite Deilephila Lineata, and its
cousins; also Sphingidae, which cover the clear-winged
Hemaris diffinis and Thysbe. Among those that
fly at night only and take no food are the members
of what is called the Attacine group, comprising our
largest and commonest moth, Cecropia; also its near
relative Gloveri, smaller than Cecropia and oflovely
rosy wine-colour; Angulifera, the male greyish brown,
the female yellowish red; Promethea, the male resembling
a monster Mourning Cloak butterfly and the female
bearing exquisite red-wine flushings; Cynthia, beautiful
in shades of olive green, sprinkled with black, crossed
by bands of pinkish lilac and bearing crescents partly
yellow, the remainder transparent. There are
also the deep yellow Io, pale blue-green Luna, and
Polyphemus, brown with pink bands of the Saturniidae;
and light yellow, red-brown and grey Regalis, and
lavender and yellow Imperialis of the Ceratocampidae,
and their relatives. Modest and lovely Modesta
belongs with the Smerinthinae group; and there are
others, feeders and non-feeders, forming a list too
long to irncorporate, for I have not mentioned the
Catocalae family, the fore-wings of which resemble
those of several members of the Sphinginae, in colour,
and when they take flight, the back ones flash out
colours that run the gamut from palest to deepest reds,
yellows, and browns, crossed by wide circling bands
of black; with these, occasionally the black so predominates
that it appears as if the wing were black and the
bands of other colour. All of them are so exquisitely
beautiful that neither the most exacting descriptions,
nor photographs from life, nor water colours faithfully
copied from living subjects can do them justice.
They must be seen alive, newly emerged, down intact,
colours at their most brilliant shadings, to be appreciated
fully. With the exception of feeding or refraining
from eating, the life processes of all these are
very similar.
