WITH THE MAGICIANS LAMP.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 41, 18 February 1911, Page 10

WITH THE MAGICIANS LAMP.

(By George Howes, F.E.S., and Edith Howes.) " Come out with m© to-night," the Magician would say. He would gather together his lure-jar of mixed treacle and rum, his death-bottle in which sudden stillness lay in wait for tiny flutterers. his net of green muslin, his little capture boxes, and his lamp. Together we would wander, communing into the dusk-hung scented bush. The air woiild be ringing with birdcalls, the last sweet challenges and replies before the drowsy twitterings of descending sleep. Walking in a circle, thg,t he might return upon his tracks, the Magician would brusli his far-smell-ing lure on each broad trunk we passed, leaving it to work his will. Dusk deepens. The last bird is asleep, his ravening beak tucked fast beneath his wing. Freed from the fear that has held them hidden through the day, a thousand smaller creatures fly out from secret hiding-places to find their food, to meet and mate, and beget their kind. A thousand? A million rather, or a thousand million. Soaring, whirling, darting, they riot in the summer air above the trees. Moths so large that they would stretch across one's palm; moths so small that it is hard to believe them moths ; gnats and flies and beetles, all awing. What a feast for a wakeful bird ! But no bird wakes. The tiny creatures have the twilight to themselves. Gnats and dainty-limbed ephemeridao collect in circling crowds and whirl their giddy whirls, selecting and jja-iring in airy

flight. Strong-winged moths hurl themselves across the tree-tops to where their loves flutter expectantly from flower to leaf. All is eager, haste-ridden movement. Summer nights are so short! Life itself is so short! There may bo but a few sweet hours in which to accomplish all its great businesses: to search, to mate, to search again for a favourable starting-place for the new generation., A swoop or the green net, and a dozen moths are struggling in its folds. What colour ! Browns and bronzes, golds and purples and' greens., spots and stripes of crimson and blue. He who has held the flashing, goldpowdered _ crea-tures in his hand can never again miscall them colourless and pale. Here is one, all a bright and tenaei green, the shade of new leaves in spring, yet even more transparent — more exquisitely veined. The next is surely a mowflake out of season, it is so purely white, so soft and delicate. Again and again the net is cast. Each time the little anxious prisoners are examined and released, unless they provo so rare that the Magician cannot part with them. Wo wander on till dusk grows into dark, then return to that ring of trees touched earlier with the Magician's brush. The Magician lights his lamp. Though in other hands it might appear nothing more marvellous than an acetylene lamp from a bicycle, in his it becomes a lamp of magic, calling up^ for our delight the enchanted dwellers in a hidden wonderwork!. "See!" the Magician says, and we see as he sees. In the close darkness beneath the trees is multitudinous life, as eager, as intense, as in the airy spaces above. Hungry caterpillars drop by silken threads from branch to branch, from branch to ground ; stick insects pick their long-legged way down slender twigs ; beetles and grubs and worms crawl out of the ground to forage ; on the underside of a leaf a silvery moth, her folded wings uplifted high above her back, is busy laying scores of tiny eggs. The Magician turns his lamp upon a tree trunk. In the broad viscid streak left *by his brush tawny moths are feeding, eagerly sucking up the odorous sweetness of the lure. Their eyes glow with a wonderful flame-red light, flashing like_ rubies in a firelit room. One feeder, rare and beautiful, is gently lowered into the chloroform bottle. Another drops at a touch to the foot of tht tree. So perfect is liis likeness to the dead leaves that there surround him, that it is long before he can bo found. We move from tree to tree, till the circle is complete. Spiders, beetles, bugs, and caterpillars have here and there crawled up the trunk to the feast ; moths and more moths flutter through the dark towards it, their jewelled eyes agleam as they pass our light. As wo go the Magician in his quiet voice recounts the life stories of the silent creatures of the night. He tells of their mystic changes and their strange vicissitudes, of their weakness and mimicry and struggles for existence, of their loves and triumphs and deaths. The joy of new knowledge thrills us. The Magician's lamp has lighted up one little corner of Nature's shadowed universe.