XIX. 



THE PROCESSION OF THE SEASONS 



No one can observe butterflies in most casual 

 way without having forced upon him the constant 

 fluctuation of forms that greet his eye. At one 

 time he will be struck by the abundance of kinds 

 and of individuals ; then by the small number he 

 will meet, mostly of two or three sorts. One 

 common kind he will fancy he has lost sight of, 

 only to have crowds of them burst on him later in 

 the season. He will look for the re-occurrence of 

 others in vain. And each succeeding year he will 

 note the same phenomena in the same order, varied 

 only by the greater abundance or scarcity of one 

 kind or another. 



This supplanting of one species by another is in 

 wonderful adaptation to the parallel changes going 

 on in the vegetable world, especially among the 

 flowers. I do not know that any of our naturalists 

 or artists have written of the harmony between the 

 prevailing tints of a New England landscape at 



