W S Coleman

British Butterflies W S Coleman

Occasionally a missive arrives from some benevolent friend, announcing the capture of a "splendid butterfly," which, imprisoned under a tumbler, awaits one's acceptance as an addition to the cabinet. However, on going to claim the proffered prize, the expected "butterfly" turns out to be some bright-coloured moth (a Tiger moth being the favourite victim of the misnomer), and one's entomological propriety suffers a shock; not so much feeling the loss of the specimen, as concern for the benighted state of an otherwise intelligent friend's mind with regard to insect nomenclature. It is clearly therefore not so superfluous as it might at first otherwise seem, to commence the subject by defining even such a familiar object as a butterfly, and more especially distinguishing it with certainty from a moth, the only other creature with which it can well be confounded. The usual notion of a butterfly is of a gay fluttering thing, whose broad painted wings are covered with a mealy stuff that comes off with handling. This is all very well for a general idea, but the characters that form it are common to some other insects besides butterflies. Moths and hawk-moths have mealy wings, and are often gaily coloured too; whilst, on the other hand, some butterflies are as dusky and plain as possible. Thus the crimson-winged Tiger, and Cinnabar moths get the name of butterflies, and the Meadow brown butterfly is as sure to be called a moth. So, as neither colouring nor mealy wings furnish us with the required definition, we must find some concise combination of characters that will answer the purpose. Butterflies, then, are insects with mealy wings, and whose horns (called "antennæ") have a clubbed or thickened tip, giving them more or less resemblance to a drum-stick. So the difference in the shape of the antennæ is the chief outward mark of distinction between butterflies and moths, the latter having antennæ of various shapes, threadlike or featherlike, but never clubbed at the tip.