314 FEMALE BUTTERFLIES. 



Butterflies are often in hot weather to be seen sitting, side by 

 side, on the margin of a half-dry pond, where 



" iu the same bathing their tender feete," 



they are enabled at once to quench their thirst for water and, 

 very likely, for gossip. In their choice of the former they 

 are, however, by no means so refined as the elegance of their 

 appearance would lead one to imagine; for in like manner 

 as we have known delicate young ladies, as great lovers of 

 London Porter as of sparkling Champagne or of the crystal 

 spring, so the stagnant muddy pool or the dusty sprinkling of 

 a metropolitan road, would seem, to all appearance, as grateful 

 to the Butterfly palate as the translucent rivulet or cooling 

 fountain. 



In these social assemblages but few females are accustomed 

 to be present, though no law of absolute exclusion would seem 

 to exist against them, as in the aerial dances of the Gnat. The 

 prevailing absence of lady Butterflies from these water-drinking 

 reunions has been assigned rather to their habits, which being 

 of a most laudable stay-at-home character, do not lead them 

 to those flights in the burning sun which excite the thirst of 

 their roving partners. We should be the more unjust in 

 passing over without due praise this quiet domesticity of the 

 female Butterfly, because it would never seem with her, as with 

 some of her Moth cousins, a mere virtue of necessity. The 

 latter possess, in some cases, only apologies for wings, or such 

 as are adequate only to the very brief support of their heavy 



