The humming-bird hawk, owing to its diurnal habits, may be seen by anyone at its best; but as to the other species that equal and surpass it in lustre, their beauty, so far as man is concerned, is all wasted on the evening gloom. They appear suddenly, are vaguely seen for a few moments, then vanish; and instead of the clear-cut, beautiful form, the rich and delicate colouring and airy, graceful motions, there is only a dim image of a moving grey or brown something which has passed before us. And some of the very best are not to be seen even as vague shapes and as shadows. What an experience it would be to look on the death's-head moth in a state of nature, feeding among the flowers in the early evening, with some sunlight to show the delicate grey-blue markings and mottlings of the upper- and the indescribable yellow of the under-wings--is there in all nature so soft and lovely a hue? Even to see it alive in the only way we are able to do, confined in a box in which we have hatched it from a chrysalis dug up in the potato patch and bought for sixpence from a workman, to look on it so and then at its portrait--for artists and illustrators have been trying to do it these hundred years--is almost enough to make one hate their art. {116} My ambition has been to find this moth free, in order to discover, if possible, whether or no it ever makes its mysterious squeaking sound when at liberty. But I have not yet found it, and lepidopterists I have talked to on this subject, some of whom have spent their lives in districts where the insect is not uncommon, have assured me that they have never seen, and never expect to see, a death's-head which has not been artificially reared. Yet moths there must be, else there would be no caterpillars and no chrysalids. [Sidenote: Moths and butterflies]