“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.”