Lo! the bright train their radiant wings unfurl. —Anna L. Barbauld.
“It seems nothing but butterflies!” cried Ruth, running out into the garden as soon as breakfast was over.
 
“Of course,” answered a voice, “the Lepidoptera will meet by the summer-house.”
 
“Does that mean butterflies? And oh, please, may I come?”
 
“Yes, to both questions,” was back from the beautiful creature flitting so 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 , as she came into the middle of the .
 
“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 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 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 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 from blossom to blossom. Our children are generally enemies to the plants. They are called , 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.”
 
“Alas!” sighed a voice in the corner. “I haven’t any to shed—that is, in the middle of my body.”
 
Ruth turned as Mr. Looper, otherwise known as the measuring worm, made this remark. She would have asked a question, for Mr. Looper, rearing his head after his own queer fashion, seemed quite ready to talk, but the sphinx stopped her.
 
“This is not the time to talk about individual legs,” he said. “We are trying to get at general differences. Now there are certain ways in which all moths differ from all butterflies.”
 
“I should say so,” said Miss Papilio, a handsome tiger swallowtail. “Moths have short, bodies, and ours are slender.” And Miss Papilio circled above them so that all might admire her delicate body and the beauty of her yellow wings, with their gray bands and stripes, and their ends in true swallowtail fashion.
 
“And here is another difference,” she added, coming to rest with her wings folded together . “We always carry our wings so when we are not flying. You moths hold yours horizontally, or sloping. Never upward.”
 
“Well, that’s true,” said the sphinx, “and you know we generally have beautiful feathery antennæ, though I, and a few others, are an exception to that rule, but you butterflies can boast only very thread-like antennæ, with a knob at the end.”
 
“Enough about that subject,” up Miss Papilio. “What I am wondering about is why moths like to fly at night, or in the . Now, butterflies must have sunshine.”
 
“We love the cool, soft night, I can’t tell you why,” answered the sphinx, “and we sleep through the noisy day.”
 
“But it is so dangerous to sleep as you do, when birds and other nuisances are up and doing.”
 
“Well, birds are pests, there is no doubt about it, and if it hadn’t been for them we insects would have the earth long ago, but you forget, we always choose a place that is nearly the colour of ourselves, and we look so much like our surroundings that it would take a sharp eye to find us. We are not brightly coloured, as a rule, like the butterflies, or if we wear gay colours at all it is usually on our wings, which we hide under the fore wings. Now the general remarks being made, the audience may view the exhibits and hear their individual histories.”
 
Ruth was up in a second.
 
“I must talk to that funny measuring worm,” she said to herself. “Why, where is he?” she added, before the bush on which she had seen him a while before.
 
“Right here,” answered what Ruth thought was a , and which proved to be none other than Mr. Looper himself, who raised his head and began to walk on his hind legs in his own eccentric fashion. Indeed, not only he, but a number of other Mr. Loopers, all showing themselves in different positions.
 
“Smart children, aren’t they?” asked some moths, variously coloured in black and brown and yellow, above the tree where the loopers were feeding. “They are ours—that is, not exactly ours, but ours will be like them when they are hatched. These fellows will soon make little cradles of leaves and go into the ground to go to sleep, and when they come out they will be like us. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
 
“Yes,” agreed Ruth, “but I’d like to know about their legs.”
 
“I can explain that,” said Mr. Looper quickly. “I have no legs in the middle of my body, and as that part of me isn’t supported, I can’t walk like other caterpillars, for I am a , even if they do call me a worm.”
 
“The legs, or the want of them, is a fault of his ancestors no doubt,” interrupted a voice. “Probably they walked in his fashion for fun, or to be different, even when they did have the right number of legs, and so lost the use of them, and the legs, too, finally. That often happens. I could tell you of cases——”
 
“Why, you look something lik............