Shining a light on moths

Often overshadowed by their more glamorous cousin, the butterfly, most moths might only be seen at night, but we should better appreciate their intricate markings, muted shades and pollinating prowess

- John Lewis-Stempel

‘Thus hath the candle singed the moth.  O these deliberate fools! When they do choose,  They have the wisdom by their wit to lose’  Portia, ‘The Merchant of Venice’ by William Shakespeare (Act II, Scene 9)

MOTHS. What are they but the poor cousins of butterflies? Although butterflies jig and jive in the brilliant sunshine, moths are condemned to the night, unseen. Unless, that is, they flutter, crazed, into a light bulb or candle flame, as if they themselves had a burning desire to leave their prison darkness and become butterflies. When moths do enter our time and place, the daylight world, they come as pests. Our clothes are moth-eaten.

Yet do not the moths have their mysteries and their beauties? For how else could they have such fabulous names? We could fill a book with the poetry of British moth nomenclature, beginning with bilberry tortrix, glaucous shears, coxcomb prominent, Hebrew character, least yellow underwing, peach blossom. Who would not wish to see a powdered quaker or a satyr pug? If Shakespeare understood the fatal attraction of moths to flame (they, in all probability, confuse the latter with the moon of navigation), he knew their magick, too, granting the name ‘moth’ to the tiniest of Titania’s fairy band.

When the midsummer day is done, moths whirl and whirl through the dusk, from sweet-scented flower to sweet-scented flower, emissaries from the court of the Faerie Queen. Or couriers of letters from secret lovers or representations of the soul. In eras more imaginative than ours, moths were all these things and more.