Читать книгу Butterflies and Moths, Shown to the Children - Theodore Wood - Страница 3

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IN this little book I want to tell you something about the common butterflies and moths which you may find in almost all parts of the country. But, first of all, I think that perhaps I had better say something about what we generally call their “life-history.”

Of course you know that butterflies and moths are not butterflies and moths to begin with. They enter the world in the form of eggs, just as birds and fishes do. These eggs are often very beautiful indeed. You may find them on the leaves of different plants, sometimes on the upper side and sometimes on the lower side. And if you look at them through a good strong magnifying-glass—or, better still, through a microscope—you will find that some are shaped like little sugar-loaves, and some like acorns, and some like tiny melons, while they are nearly always covered with raised patterns which one might almost think must have been cut by fairy chisels.

In course of time these eggs hatch, and out come a number of little caterpillars, which at once begin to eat the leaves of the plant on which the eggs were laid. They have most wonderful appetites, and hardly ever stop feeding all day long. The consequence is, of course, that they grow very quickly; and in a few days’ time they find that their jackets are much too tight for them. Then a most curious thing happens. Their skins split right down the back, and they wriggle and twist about, and rub themselves against the surrounding objects, till at last they manage to creep out of them altogether and appear in new ones, which had been gradually forming underneath the old!

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get new suits of clothes, or new frocks, as easily as this?

As soon as their change of garments is over, the little caterpillars begin to feed again, as hungrily as before. But after about a week their new skins are too tight for them, and they have to change them again! This very often happens six or seven times before they are fully fed. But at last they stop eating, throw off their skins once more, and appear as chrysalids.

You may often find these chrysalids on fences and walls, and also on the stems and leaves of bushes and low plants. Sometimes they are suspended by the tips of their tails from little silken pads, which the caterpillars spin for that purpose; and sometimes they are held upright by silken belts round the middle of their bodies. They cannot see, for they have no eyes; and they cannot eat, for they have no mouths; and of course they cannot move about. All that they can do, if you touch them, is just to wriggle their tails from side to side. And there they remain, sometimes for weeks and sometimes for months, till the time comes for the perfect butterflies to make their appearance.

Then, one day, the skins of the chrysalids split open, and out creep the butterflies. But if you were to see them now you would never guess what they were, for their wings are so tiny, and so crumpled up, that you can hardly see them. They climb up to some firm foothold, however, and then remain perfectly still; and by slow degrees the creases straighten out, and the wings become larger and larger, and stronger and stronger, till at last they reach their full size and strength, and the butterflies, perfect at last, are able to fly away.

That is the “life-history” of a butterfly; and moths are developed in just the same way, except that very often their caterpillars spin silken cells, which we call “cocoons,” and turn to chrysalids inside them. And the chrysalids of moths, remember, are often known as “pupæ.”

Then there are one or two other things about these insects that I should like to tell you. One is that their wings are covered all over with very tiny scales.

Of course you know that if you catch a butterfly, and let it go again, your fingers are covered with a kind of mealy dust. And if you look at a little of this dust through a microscope you will find that it is made up of thousands and thousands of the smallest possible scales, all most beautifully chiselled and sculptured, and each with a slender little stalk at the base. And if you look at a piece of the butterfly’s wings through the microscope, you will see that these scales are arranged upon it in rows, which overlap one another just like the slates on the roof of a house.

All the colour of a butterfly’s wing is in these scales, and if you rub them off you will find that the wing itself is as transparent as that of a bluebottle-fly or a bee.

Then a great many butterflies and moths have a “trunk” or “proboscis” coiled up underneath the head. This is really a long tube, and when the insects are hungry they poke it down into a flower, and suck up the nectar through it. You can see this trunk quite easily if you look sideways at such a butterfly as a “scarlet admiral” or a “peacock.”

Then there is just one thing more.

No doubt you would like to know how to tell butterflies from moths. Well, just look at their feelers or “antennæ,” as they are often called. You will see that those of butterflies are thickened at the very tips, while those of moths are not. Besides this, the body of a butterfly is nipped in at the middle much more than that of a moth. And when a butterfly is at rest it always folds its wings together over its back, while moths nearly always spread them out, or allow them to hang down, or wrap them round their bodies.

THEODORE WOOD.