1. Willow Beauty
2. Large Emerald
PLATE XXXVI
THE WILLOW BEAUTY (1)
I am sorry to say that I cannot tell you why this moth is called the “Willow Beauty.” For, in the first place, it is not a very beautiful insect. Both its front and hinder wings are greyish-brown all over, with a few wavy black lines running across them, and one pale zigzag streak near the outer margin. Certainly, one would hardly call it a “beauty.” And then, in the second place, it has nothing to do with willow trees; for its grey, twig-like caterpillar feeds on the leaves of rose-bushes, and plum trees, and pear trees, and birch trees, and sometimes on those of lilac and elder, but never on the leaves of willows.
This moth is a very common one indeed in all parts of the country, and from the middle of June until the beginning of August you may see it in numbers, resting with outspread wings on fences and tree-trunks during the day, and fluttering round gas-lamps in the evening.
There is another moth which is very like the “willow beauty,” but is nearly twice as big, and is rather lighter in colour. This is called the “great oak beauty,” and you may sometimes see it resting on the trunks of oak trees in June.
PLATE XXXVI
THE LARGE EMERALD (2)
The “emeralds” are pale green moths with very delicate wings, and the Large Emerald is the finest and most beautiful of them all. It is almost as large as the “swallow-tail moth,” and when it first comes out of the chrysalis its wings are of the most lovely green colour, with three wavy white lines across the front pair, and a scalloped white line and a row of white dots across the hinder ones. But after two or three days it begins to fade; and if you were to put it away in a collection you would most likely find after a few months that it was nearly white.