Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/261

Rh elder branch of the great natural group of scaly-winged insects, or Lepidoptera, to which both belong. The butterflies are less numerous in species, or kinds, and more uniform in habit and appearance. These gaudy and papery-winged day-flies have their own attractions and present their own scientific problems, but in number, diversity, soft and delicate colors, and patterns and unexpected modes of life, they can not hold a candle, to speak both figuratively and appositely, to the foolish but lovely moths.

First, let us assure ourselves that by moths we do not mean clothes-moths. These terrors to the housekeeper are only of two or three kinds, and of small size, belonging to the genera Tinea and Tineola; while there are over seven thousand species of North American moths already in our catalogues, from the large and gorgeous "Regal Moth" (Citheronia regalis) to the "Tiny Gem" (Lithariapteryx), of all shades of color from gray to pink, from black to yellow, all innocent of carpetor clothes-eating in their young larval days. To some general statements as to these, the methods of hunting and preserving them, and those who carry on the fascinating pursuit, I claim the reader's indulgence for a few pages of what I shall try to make easy and instructive reading.

It is, perhaps, unnecessary to state that moths, like plants, bear, each kind, a particular double Latin or Latinized title, as Actias luna, the "American Moon-Moth," or "Queen of the Night." The first name is that of the genus, the second of the species. The genus is founded on certain particular points of structure, and usually embraces a number of kinds or species which share in these particular structural features. While the genus Actias, for instance, is known by its thinly scaled, pale-green wings, the hind pair furnished with twisted "tails," our species luna differs from a number of Asiatic and African species by certain marks and peculiarities of pattern and size.

These Latin names are a source of some difficulty to lay readers and to many amateurs. Some people prefer English names by which to designate their specimens, but our species have not been known for years, as have the European moths; consequently very few have received vernacular names. The "cotton-worm" (Aletia argillacea), and the "army-worm" (Heliophila unipuncta), are, indeed, two species of moths well known for their ravages in the larval state, and which are consequently provided with vernacular names by which they are distinguished. But we have no English names for the great majority of species, which are really different in kind from their transatlantic brethren.

The introduction of common names for our moths is evidently a matter not to be forced, but to be left to itself. The rule of priority, which Linnæus appointed to govern the Latin names, can not obtain here. Some of our butterflies have received several English names, as the common "milk-weed butterfly." Some of the names for moths in