172 Three Young Crusoe s 



There were three butterflies that William had 

 seen in Virginia. One was the large, brick-colored 

 milkweed butterfly, another the white cabbage 

 butterfly, and a third, about the size of the cabbage 

 butterfly, was yellow, and collected in numbers in 

 wet mud and sand. He discovered one that looked 

 like the milkweed butterfly, but it had a broad dark 

 band on the margin of the hind wing. He also saw 

 a yellow one a good deal larger than the one with 

 which he was familiar. 



One of the most interesting new kinds had pe- 

 culiar, long, narrow, yellow and black, transparent 

 wings; and the birds would not eat them any more 

 than they would the milkweed butterfly. They 

 were brilliantly colored and conspicuous, but seemed 

 to have some peculiar charm that protected them. 



Victorina collected by the hundreds on rotting 

 mangoes and sucked their juice; dione liked vanilla; 

 black page loved the hot sunshine fully as much as 

 the butterflies farther north; while cracker had a 

 peculiar habit of resting with its wings folded flat 

 on a tree trunk like a catocala moth, or underwing, 

 and crawling around to the opposite side like a squir- 

 rel when the boys came toward it. Sometimes, 

 there would be nearly a dozen cracker butterflies on 

 the same trunk and they would almost jostle one 

 another in their haste to get around. 



