TTERFLY BOTANY--THE CATERPILLAR
STAGE--FEEDING UP--COAT CHANGING--FORMS OF CATERPILLARS--THE
CHRYSALIS--MEANING OF PUPA, CHRYSALIS, AND AURELIA--FORMS OF
CHRYSALIDES--DIFFICULTIES OF TRANSFORMATION--INFLUENCE OF TEMPERATURE.

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. {2}

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 "antennae") have a clubbed or thickened tip, giving them more or
less resemblance to a drum-stick._ So the difference in the shape of the
_antennae_ is the _chief_ outward mark of distinction between butterflies
and moths, the latter having _antennae_ of various shapes, threadlike or
featherlike, but _never clubbed at the tip_.

Having thus settled how a butterfly is to be recognized at sight, let us
see what butterfly _life_ is: how the creature lives, and has lived, in the
stages preceding its present airy fo