To many people, moths are known by what they leave behind—holes in the winter woolens; and butterflies are to them, somehow, things of the sunlight and the summertime. It is worth while to know that these great families of butterflies and moths are not by any means divided equally, that for every family of butterflies there are at least nine of the moths and that the butterflies form but a small proportion of the gaily colored insects of the fields.
Perhaps it makes but little difference to the public, who call them all alike, but it is as easy to tell a butterfly from a moth as it is to tell a lizard from a snake, for all the butterflies have club-shaped feelers, or antennæ, whereas the moths do not, and any child of six can learn to tell the two apart.
No butterfly or moth in its winged state can harm us or our plants. It has no jaws, but keeps itself alive by sucking nectar from the flowers or juices from the fruits or other parts. Its other self, its larva, however, can cause no end of damage. One inconspicuous, brownish form, the codling-moth, no larger than my thumb nail, costs apple growers about ten million dollars every year, while the cabbage moth, the clothes moth, the cutworm and the dreaded gipsy-moth are only a few examples of a gigantic army of voracious larvæ against which man has been struggling ever since he first began to plant seeds in the ground or set out trees for fruit.
LARVA OF THE SWALLOW-TAIL BUTTERFLY OF THE SPICE-BUSH
(Papilio troilus, Linn.)
Is this, I wonder, an insect make-believe, a caterpillar mask, as it were, to frighten away enemies? The black and white eye-spots are not real eyes, but to a bird they doubtless seem so. Its real eyes are inconspicuous points at each side of the head, too small to appear in the photograph.
Few of as stop to think, as the beautiful swallow-tail butterfly, gorgeous in its black and yellow painted wings, flits by us, that it is made of sassafras and spice-bush leaves gathered together and ground up. This monster is a leaf-eating creature, its purpose being the accumulation of food material out of which is made inside of it the gorgeous swallow-tail butterfly. It feeds on sassafras and spice-bush leaves, and when the time arrives makes a nest for itself by fastening the edges of a leaf together. In this nest it passes the winter. When spring comes it breaks open the gray shell of the chrysalis, unfolds a pair of black and gold wings with long tails to them, and flies away in the sunshine in search of flowers and a mate. It is then no more like this monster than an eagle is like a hippopotamus, yet after it has flown about, sucking nectar through its long beak, it mates and lays a mass of eggs, out of which hatch again these strange, weird beings.