ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 35 



beauty, and the winds that wear and fray their wings. In the case of the Vanessida3 and 

 Graptidie there are the terrible torpidity into which the winter chills them, and what I 

 imagine to be no less terrible, the partial awakenings on intervening milder days. 



No greater contrast to the picture presented in the fine verses of S[)enser can be 

 shown to us than the reality, when in the early spring, a pair of hibernated Graptas — 

 Grapta Progne, for example — perform their nuptials. Worn and dilapidated, the 

 bloom and glory of youth swept away from them by winter storms, they furtively and in 

 contradiction to the very name they bear (Procne, a swallow, one that shuns the woods), 

 seek the shades and safeguards of the trees, whose lichens and mosses resemble in colour 

 their own sober hues, and there unite themselves. The cycle of their existence is then 

 soon completed, and they perish ere yet the summer has robed the world in beauty. 



The judicious writer, whose comments on Spenser's lines I have quoted, says in the 

 same chapter : " A year or two back " — his work was published in 1833 — " everybody in 

 London that had a voice was resolved upon being a butterfly born in a bower." When I 

 was a boy the song to which he alludes was still popular, and the melody to which it was 

 sung haunts me still. Copies of it h-tve becjme scirce. When I was last in England I 

 had great difliculty in finding one. This is how the words run : 



" I'd be a butterfly born in a bower 



Where roses and lilifs and violets meet, 

 Roving for ever from flower to flower 



And kissing all buds that are pretty and sweet, 

 I'd never languish for vealth or for power, 



I'd never sigh to see slaves at my feet, 

 I'd be a butterfly born in a bower, 



And kissing all buds that are pretty and sweet." 



" What though you tell me each gay little rover 

 Shrinks from the blast of the first autumn day, 

 Surely 'tis better, when summer is over, 



To die when all fair things are fading away. 

 Some in life's winter may toil to discover 



Means of procuring a weary delay, 

 I'd be a butterfly living a rover, 



Dying when fair things are fading away." 



T. H. Bayley. 



Epicurean, is it not? "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." The sentiment is 

 bad, and God, who has fitted all things in just proportions, never gave real ground for 

 false sentiments. As we have seen, the butterfly is not a fit emblem of selfish frivolity. 

 It bears the part in nature that it was destined to bear, and it has to endure its share of 

 ills. Instead of dying when fair things are fading away, many species have to survive 

 the winter, and to perish when fair things are bursting into life, and herein is a truer 

 lesson for those who are aiming at what they are pleased to call a butterfly existence here. 

 Adelaide Taylor recognized the false sentiment in the song, and in one of those little 

 rhyming lessons on propriety which she and her sisters composed for '' infant minds," 

 says,— 



" The butterfly, an idle thing, 

 Nor honey makes, nor yet can sing, 



Like to the bee and bird ; 

 Nor does it, like the prudent ant, 

 Lay up the grain for time of want, 

 A wise and cautious hoard." 



" My youth is but a summer's day, 

 Then, like the bee and ant, I'll lay 



A store of learning by. 

 And though from flower to flower I rove, 

 My stock of wisdom I'll improve 



Nor be a butterfly." 



But in this little lesson we cannot help noticing another very common mistake, that 



of setting forth the ant as an example of acquisitiveness. Adelaide in the verses quoted 



suggests the acquisition of learning, but the example is generally taken to suggest the 



acquisition of wealth. Solomon's words are, — 



"Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise : 



" Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, 



" Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth food in the harvest."— Pror. VI., 6-8. 



Now, the lesson conveyed in these words is only that conveyed in " Whatever thy hand 



