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Updated: May 1, 2025
And I remembered Mary Virginia's childish hand putting into his the gray-winged Catocala, and how the little moth, raising the sad-colored wings worn to suit his surroundings, revealed beneath that disfiguring and disguising cloak the exquisite and flower-like loveliness of the underwings. He paused in his swinging stride, and looked down at me a bit shyly. "Parson you see how it is with me?"
This is an interesting suggestion, and may even be sober fact; but its adoption would necessitate the bird flying open-mouthed among the oaks and other trees beneath which it finds the yellow underwings and cockchafers on which it feeds, and I have more than once watched it hunting its victims with the beak closed.
"I got to thinking, when he threw aside his plain gray cloak and showed me his lovely underwings, that he's like some people people you'd think were very common, you know. You couldn't be expected to know what was underneath, could you?
It contained several books on nature subjects which would be of much help in school work, a number of conveniences Elnora could not afford, and a pair of glass-covered plaster casts, for each large moth she had. In these the upper and underwings of male and female showed. He explained that she would break her specimens easily, carrying them around in boxes.
"Don't you reckon," said she naïvely, "that plenty of folks are like him? They're the sad color of the street-dust, of course, for things do borrow from their surroundings, didn't you know that? That's called protective mimicry, the Padre says. So you only think of the dust-colored outside and all the while the underwings are right there, waiting for you to find them!
O happy grasshopper! singing all day in the trees and tall herbage, in a country where every village urchin is not sent afield to "study natural history" with green net and a good store of pins, shall I ever again hear thy breezy music, and see thee among the green leaves, beautiful with steel-blue and creamy-white body, and dim purple over and vivid red underwings?
One very large group of the night-flying moths have been named the "underwings," because of the fact that their hind wings are very much more brilliant than the front, and in lighting they fold the dull pair back over the bright, completely concealing them. These creatures are in the habit of resting in the daytime against walls, or stones, or the bark of trees.
Mary Virginia smiled, and picking up the little moth, held his body, very gently, between her finger-tips. He fluttered, spreading out his gray wings; and then one saw the beautiful pansy-like underwings, and the glorious lower pair of scarlet velvet barred and bordered with black. "I brought him along, thinking the Padre might like him, and tell me something about him," said the little girl.
Flocks of crazy, distracted birds flew close by in great numbers, for the most part finches and larks, with here and there a fieldfare or two, their breasts and underwings buff colour. Then came a flight wholly made up of buntings, whose brilliant yellows looked deep orange against the leaden grey that shrouded all. There was no end to the great host.
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