"You don't see this fellow up here often. Who knows the difference between a butterfly and a moth? No one? Well, that is because most children are going to bed about the time the moth begins to fly. Doesn't any one know? You have all seen moths and butterflies? Well, well, well!
"The first thing you see is that when the moth lights on the edge of a flower-cup, instead of holding the wings up above the body, as the butterfly does, it spreads its wings flat over the body. Then a butterfly has little knobs at the tips of its slender antennæ, while the moth has slender ones without knobs, or pretty, feathery ones that look like plumes."
"I supposed," said Peter, "that moths and butterflies were just the same, except that moths will fly into the house and burn their wings on the lamps." Peter didn't in the least care about moths and butterflies. He was longing to get to the top of the mountain, but he was too polite to seem impatient.
"They are alike in many ways. You remember, do you not, that the locust has a pair of soft jaws covering over the dark, hard ones? In the moths and butterflies these jaws are different. Each one is long, and has a deep groove on the inner side. These two grooves fit together, and make a slender tube called a proboscis. When flying this long tube is rolled up in a tight coil under the head; alighting, the proboscis is quickly uncoiled and dipped into the throat of the flower, and the sweet nectar sipped from it. See here, Jack, what have you on your fingers?"
"The dust from the butterfly's wings, sir."
"No, not quite dust, or powder, either. That dust is tiny hair and scales. If I had a powerful lens in my pocket I could show you how deeply some of these tiny scales are scalloped, so that they look like a hand with fingers. If you rubbed all the scales off that wing there would be no color left, for the scales are like little sacs, and many of them contain grains of color called pigment—red, yellow, or brown. You have all seen the rainbow of colors on a soap-bubble? Well, the brilliant colors of the wing are made in just the same way as the colors on a bubble: by the light striking the little ridges on the overlapping scales."
"It is not only we who are fearfully and wonderfully made," said Mrs. Reece, "but even the tiniest creatures God has created, and all with a purpose, all with a place."
The guide nodded his head. "The more you study, the more you see how every least thing is part of a great mysterious whole. If you look at a butterfly's wing from which the scales have been rubbed you will see plan and purpose in the placing of even those scales; for the little pits into which the stems of the scale fit are turned all one way, toward the base of the wing."
"They are so beautiful!" exclaimed Betty. "Are they always pretty?"
"That depends," replied the old man, "whether in their caterpillar youth you think them pretty. They have a bad name, then, for being homely, and do a good deal of damage."