A Night Visitant
How different the conduct of a familiar of the night watches I have just lost! This was a Clouded Border moth (Lonastilis marginata) that used to visit my bedside during that blessed hour of relaxation when one reads some choice book that has nothing to do with one's work whilst comfortably propped up against a pillow. The food-plant of the Clouded Border caterpillar is aspen, willow or poplar, and I presume that these nightly visitations were due to the fact that I have a shelter-belt of balsam poplars at the north end of the garden, a richly scented species sometimes used as a wind-screen to the Herefordshire hopyards. I should like to be able to say that the beautiful little creature—about the size of a holly-blue butterfly—used to come flitting and pirouetting through the curtains to perch on my pillow every night. This was not so, but my elfish wanderer did at any rate vouchsafe its presence two or three times a week. But how could I possibly presume to suggest that my moth-errant was always the same being? For this reason—that the Clouded Border is a moth of exceptional variability in its colouring, the reddish-brown flecks or splashes on a white ground being often dimmed or, as the term marginata indicates, being frequently clustered along the margins of the wings. But my aerial visitant was a particularly brilliant specimen, and the markings were not only sharply defined but evenly distributed over the whole surface of the wings. Perhaps there were others in the neighbourhood as gallantly adorned, but I prefer to think not. The moment the flitterling appeared in my room, it would execute the most astonishing gyrations and baroque swirls and volutes not only round the light but round my head and above the bed, dancing the air like those
" fairy elves Whose midnight revels, by a forest side Or fountain some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon Sits arbitress."
But always the sprite would settle in the end on my pillow. Then one fatal night of drowsiness I picked it up to place it on the picture-rail of a water-colour above my head. It sprang from my hand, rushed into the light and in a few moments fell dead, with pitifully crumpled wings, upon my bedside-table.
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