A Race after a Butterfly 



faced a cannonade in those days than a bevy of boarding-school 

 misses, but there was no alternative. There were the dreaded 

 females at the windows (for it was Saturday, and vacation hour), 

 and there was my butterfly. Sweating, blushing, inwardly 

 anathematizing my luck, I rushed past the school, only to be 

 overwhelmed with mortification by the rascally porter of the 

 institution, who was sweeping the pavement, and who bawled 

 out after me: "Oh, it 's no use; you can't catch it': It 's fright- 

 ened; you 're so ugly! " And now it began to rise in its flight. 

 It was plainly my last chance, for it would in a moment be lost 

 over the housetops. I made an upward leap, and by a fortunate 

 sweep of the net succeeded in capturing my prize. 



Many years later, after a long interval in which ornithology 

 and botany had engrossed my mind to the exclusion of ento- 

 mology, my boyish love for the butterflies was renewed, and I 

 found out the name of the choice thing I had captured on that hot 

 July day on the streets of Salem, and returned to North Carolina 

 for the special purpose of collecting a quantity of these superb in- 

 sects. My quest was entirely successful, though my specimens 

 were not taken at Salem, but under the shadow of Mount 

 Mitchell, in the flower-spangled valleys which lie at its feet. 



Genus BRENTHIS, Hubner 



"The garden is fragrant everywhere; 

 In its lily-bugles the gold bee sups, 

 And butterflies flutter on winglets fair 

 Round the tremulous meadow buttercups." 



MUNKITTRICK. 



Butterfly. — Small or medium-sized butterflies, very closely ap- 

 proximating in form and color the species of the genus Argynnis, 

 in which they are included by many writers. The principal 

 structural difference between the two genera is found in the fact 

 that in the genus Brentbis only one of the subcostal nervules 

 arises before or at the end of the cell of the primaries, while in 

 Argynnis the two innermost subcostal nervules thus arise. In 

 Brentbis the palpi are not as stout as in Argynnis, and the short 

 basal spur or branch of the median vein of the front wings, 



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