Pictures on Butterflies’ Wings (July)
I have already told you of the beautiful colours to be found on butterflies’ wings, and how people have actually used a butterfly paintbox to make pictures with. Now I am going to show you some butterflies and moths (quite common ones all of them) which have queer little pictures on their wings ready made—real pictures I mean, faces and animals and things like that.
You may find it, at first, a little hard to see them, for they are puzzle pictures, like those you get in crackers, but once you have found the face, or whatever it may be, you won’t be able to help seeing it.
I will start you with quite an easy one. Some of you, I expect, have noticed how often living creatures have a pattern on them like an open eye. This is called an “eye-marking,” and is of course quite a different thing from the eye which is used for seeing with. Nearly all our butterflies have an eye-marking somewhere on their wings, and we find it in many other creatures besides butterflies. In birds, for instance (you will remember the peacock at once), and fish (next time you pass a big fishmonger’s look out for a John Dory, he has a beauty) and lizards and snakes and frogs and things like that. It is not often seen on animals, though a leopard’s or a jaguar’s spots are something very like it.
If you look at the picture of the Emperor Moth you will see that there is a very nicely drawn eye on each of his upper wings (his real eyes are quite hidden by his little fur cape); and if you look at the caterpillar of the Elephant hawk-moth long enough, I am sure you will think that he is looking back at you, and that he does not like the look of you much.
Here, again, it is not his eyes that you see, but his eye-markings. In the first picture they are just where you would expect eyes to be, and I must explain to you why. He is called the “Elephant” caterpillar because the head-end of him (“head-end” sounds rather queer; but I think that if one may say “tail-end” one may say “head-end”) tapers off very quickly from his fat body, and when he swings this end of him, as he often does, it looks like an elephant’s trunk. You will see what I mean in the second picture.
Now when he is frightened or angry, he tucks his head in like a telescope close up to the eye-markings, and then these look as if they are really eyes.
Some people think, and they may be quite right, that these eye-markings frighten off birds and lizards and things like that, who would soon eat the caterpillar if they did not think that his eye-markings were really eyes, and that they must have a big body behind them.
You remember the eyes as big as tea-cups in “The Little Tin Soldier”? If you have not read that, read it as quickly as you can.
Eye-markings are very easy to see, and I am sure that you will be able to find four of them on the wings of the Peacock Butterfly.
Some people think that these frighten off creatures who might eat him, just like those on the Elephant Hawk caterpillar, and some people think just the opposite—that the eye-markings are so clear a mark that the butterfly’s enemies will bite at them, and so get a mouthful of butterfly’s wing, instead of the butterfly himself; which is, of course, all for the good of the butterfly. I don’t think we can be quite sure that either of these reasons is true, but we may be certain that if the eye-markings were not somehow useful to the butterfly they would not be there.
The upper eye-markings on the Peacock have nothing particularly curious about them, but those on the under-wings each form a clear man’s face with a big moustache, whiskers, and a bald forehead. If you hold the paper a little way off, you will see it clearly. It is something like Mr. Balfour.
This is a full-face picture, but in the other moths, the Mother Shipton and the Magpie, you will find side-face pictures. The Mother Shipton takes its name from having the face of an old witch on each of its upper wings. I will leave you to puzzle this out for yourselves, but I will give you the hint that the old witch has a hooked nose and a pointed chin.
The Magpie Moth has the side face of rather an ugly boy with a button of a nose and his mouth wide open. This is made up by the markings of each pair of wings taken together, and can only be seen when the wings are in a certain position. I will give you a hint here, too, which will help you. The seventh spot on the border of the upper wing, counting downwards, is the boy’s eye; and he has a fine head of hair.
Nearly all butterflies and moths have some kind of picture on their wings, and I think that it is nicer looking for these than looking for pictures in the fire, because, when once you have found a butterfly picture, you may be sure of finding it again, and showing it to other people.