Modern Mothology
Moths. By E. B. Ford. (Collins New Naturalist Series, 35s.) THERE is a book to be written about a cult of sinister fellows whose delight it is to lurk in lime groves at dusk in June and there beguile all manner of moths into the seductive beams of the mercury vapour lamp. They are the mothistes with interests in little moths ('micros') or big moths or all moths and, occasionally, moths and butterflies. And what a sport this is ! And how curiously the lepidopterists talk. During their club or society nights in the back rooms of dhrkened museums they recount among themselves how th'ey 'took a series' of Marbled Minors, Flame Brocades, Wood Tigers or Silky Waves. Occasionally they lapse into bastardised Latin and speak of Noctuids or Geometrids which means that the Underwings or Loopers are abroad. Moth men bicker about killing agents and local varieties; they cut swathes through reed beds with their sweeping nets; they plan monographs, forsake their wives and dream, between times, of lepidopterous Avalons in Wicken Fen, Ham Street or in the Cairngorms where relict species betoken days when Britain was as cold, colourful and unsustaining as an iced lolly. Not that these mothomaniacs have much time for dreams. The moth season is never closed. Purim can be dug from beneath oaks at the winter solstice; smoky urban dockyards yield the fantastically rare Waves Black, and fair winds from foreign parts have blown immigrants into their very laps.
This book is about all these things. It is a very modern mothology in the sense that the author, E. B. Ford, is first and foremost a geneticist, that is to say he is primarily concerned about freaks and varieties because they show how the genes or hereditary character-formers have been crossed and re-crossed in seemingly endless permutations like beads on an abacus. Many lepidopterists 'collect' as little boys collect engine numbers or stamps. There are also hundreds of specialists and many amateur geneticists among them. It is to be hoped that this book will inspire many more. Simply as a book it's expensive, readable and good to look at.
JOHN HILLABY
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