will kill them. On the other hand, in Westphalia the butterfly plays
the part given to the scapegoat in other countries, and on St Peter's
Day, in February, it is publicly expelled with rhyme and ritual.
Elsewhere, as in Samoa--I do not know where I found all these
facts--probably in _The Golden Bough_--the butterfly has been feared
as a god, and to catch a butterfly was to run the risk of being struck
dead. The moth, for all I know, may be the centre of as many legends
but I have not met them. It may be, however, that in many of the
legends the moth and the butterfly are not very clearly distinguished.
To most of us it seems easy enough to distinguish between them; the
English butterfly can always be known, for instance, by his clubbed
horns. But this distinction does not hold with regard to the entire
world of butterflies--a world so populous and varied that thirteen
thousand species have already been discovered, and entomologists hope
one day to classify twice as many more. Even in these islands, indeed,
most of us do not judge a moth chiefly by its lack of clubbed horns.
It is for us the thing that flies by night and eats holes in our
clothes. We are not even afraid of it in all circumstances. Our terror
is an indoors terror. We are on good terms with it in poetry, and play
with the thought of

The desire of the moth for the star.

We remember that it is for the moths that the pallid jasmine smells so
sweetly by night. There is no shudder in our minds when we read:

And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream,
And caught a little silver trout.