186 FLIGHT OF BUTTERFLIES. 



Not only can bees and some beetles pursue their flight in 

 the wind's eye, but even butterflies have been seen, with their 

 " sail-broad vans/' making way against it. In power, swift- 

 ness, and grace of motion " the painted populace " present, in 

 different families, something of the variety which adorns their 

 pinions; but when we look at these summer vagrants, idly 



flitting 



" From bed to bed, from one to t'other border," 



we should hardly expect them ever to exemplify permanence 

 as well as power of flight. We hear, however, not only of 

 migrating birds, but also of migrating butterflies, of which 

 some, not satisfied 



" The woods, the rivers, and the meadows green, 

 "With their aire-cutting wings to measure wide," 



attempt, occasionally, to " measure ocean/' Tor this purpose 



they sometimes assemble in gaily-bannered companies, and, 



in a straightforward continued course, press seaward and over 



sea, only, probably, to add in most cases to the number of those 



fair and fragile things which, strewed upon its surface, are for 



ever serving to augment the perishable " treasures of the deep." 



But we need not follow insects over ocean, or even stir 



from off our chair, to see the surpassing power of their organs 



of flight; or, if we do not now see, we may remember, that the 



fly, now crawling so feebly up our window, was able, in the 



sunny heyday of her vigour, to sport above our heads at the 



rate of above thirty feet in a second, or more than the third of 



