100 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



butterflies and innumerable brilliant 

 green cocoons hung on each plant, 

 many of them still filled, many of them 

 already empty of these recently emerg- 

 ing insects. Nobody, who has not seen 

 the quantities of butterflies we saw, 

 could have possibly believed the ver- 



nothing else but a Monarch with folded 

 wings. As we were in the midst of 

 this field, fighting the butterflies with 

 branches, from touching our faces, 

 there burst suddenly on our ears the 

 weird laughing cry of a loon, which 

 as we saw afterwards was disporting 



A SECTION OF A GREAT FLOCK OF MONARCH BUTTERFLIES. 

 Kindness of the American Museum of Natural History. 



acity of what I am telling you. I have 

 never regretted so much of not having 

 a photographic camera with me as I 

 did that morning. We felt positively 

 uncanny and my wife was frightened. 

 At the edge of the clearing, every 

 branch of any of the trees, looked as if 

 they were covered with dead, brown 

 leaves and every apparent leaf was 



on a nearby lake with two young ones 

 and my wife frantically grabbed my 

 arm at this unfamiliar sound and her 

 face turned pale. 



I do not think that many people have 

 had an equal experience and during 

 the twelve years that have gone by, my 

 wife and I have many times discussed 

 the same. I have been hunting in the 



