THE FAERY YEAR 



common blues are incessantly whirling round each 

 other. 



Not every meeting of a male and a female 

 orange-tip is a greeting of affection. I believe the 

 orange-tip butterflies pick and choose their mates 

 with nicety or fastidiousness. There are what we 

 might term proposals among the butterflies, and 

 there are decided rejections. I have witnessed both 

 among fritillaries and orange-tips. A short and very 

 pretty courtship one of the daintiest, surely, in the 

 world of love often ends with such a rejection 

 among the smaller fritillary butterflies. 



A male pearl-bordered fritillary will pursue a 

 female. Soon both alight on the coppice ground, 

 among the bugle blossoms and the faint blue of the 

 common not the germander speedwell, that little 

 flower which on a doubtful June day is half awake, 

 half sleeping. Sitting side by side, they will, softly 

 and slowly, half close and reopen their wings. Then 

 for a few seconds neither will stir wing, head, nor 

 sensitive antennae, till one moves, ever so slightly, 

 just to lay persuasively the tip of its wing on the 

 edge of its friend's wing the coyest of attentions. 

 I have seen the female fritillary do this, but so 

 lightly that her companion never answered to what 

 to him should have been the very magic of touch 

 seemed unconscious of the love reminder ; it was so 

 shy and delicate. But after another second or so 

 he flew off to a bugle blossom in one direction, she, 

 disillusioned it may be, in another, and so the court- 

 ship ended. The philter had failed to charm. 

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