1260 THE BUTTERFLIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



hovering over a rose, several buttei-flies poised on an ear of wheat. 

 In a fresco a butterfly is seen fluttering near some strawberries and figs, 

 while from either side a bird approaches. A butterfly on a grape vine, 

 seen on a marble pillar, which must be considered as a funeral niomuiicnt, 

 belongs to the same class, and so do buttei-flies that a bird is about to 

 attack ; several funeral urns in Montfaucon's Antiquite Expliquee show 

 examples of this sort. In a sepulchral cippus of the Villa Borghese a 

 youth is seen surrounded l)y a monkey, a dog, a bird and a butterfly ; the 

 butterfly sits on his right hand, while a second butterfly close by is being 

 devoured by a bird, and a third seems to flutter among the leaves of a shrub. 

 This stone shows us that the butterfly was cherished and tended by boys 

 and girls as a pet. 



Examples of the second class, where the butterfly represents vital energy, 

 are seen in precious stones that were worn as amulets. On an amethyst 

 a butterfly is seen sitting on a great human eye ; on a carnelian an actor 

 with a mask is seen ; on one side of him is a horn of plenty, on the other a 

 butterfly. On seven engraved stones the butterfly is seen in connection 

 with the peacock, whose tail was considered as an emblem of blossoming 

 meadows. In five of these stones, the peacock drives the butterfly, which 

 is attached by a double thread, and in one place two ears of corn are sprout- 

 ing out of the ground before the bird ; in a sLxth stone the butterfly carries 

 the great bird on its back. In a Herculaneum fresco a grifiin, whose use on 

 amulets is well known, is seen driven by a butterfly. In a tomb lately 

 discovered at Mycenae, little gold disks with butterflies engraved on them 

 were found. The specimens of pottery in this grave were so rude, that it 

 was at first thought to belong to a time 1200 years B. C., butan examina- 

 tion of all its contents makes it seem probable that it is a tomb of Goths 

 who were for a time at Mycenae, who adopted the Greek custom of burying 

 various objects with the dead, and added to their own pottery articles 

 belonging to the spoils they had accumulated. These disks were doubtless 

 attached to garments and served not only the purpose of ornamentation, 

 but had the same prophylactic object that amulets have. A sard on which 

 a butterfly is added to a horn of plenty, a dolphin, a rudder and a globe 

 is doubtless a sailor's amulet. 



Among the representations of the butterfly as the type of the human soul, 

 the Capitoline sarcophagus takes the first place. In it Minerva places a 

 clearly defined butterfly on the head of the newly created being. A bronze 

 medallion coined in the time of Antoninus Pius shows the same scene, though 

 the butterfly cannot be clearly distinguished. On funeral monuments a 

 butterfly fluttering over a corpse, a skeleton or a skull is also a type of 

 the soul. An interesting monumental relief which is now in the Palazzo 

 Ricardi in Florence shows a funeral pyre, several persons standing around 

 it, and a butterfly rising above the flames. A terra-cotta slab, now lost, 



