THE FAERY YEAR 



Alexis. The sky-blue butterfly, fresh born, wet 

 from its chrysalid, sitting on the tomb ! If a 

 symbol, what could be so exquisite, so subtle in 

 significance ? The small heath flits among the 

 unstoried mounds the poor quarter of the town 

 and among the iron rails that fence about advertise- 

 ments of love and worth the rich quarter but 

 again and again his trifling figure is back again on 

 the bit of mown ground. He has a rival for this 

 spot, and in the course of a sunny afternoon many 

 short and harmless but probably fiery battles take 

 place, with the result, I fancy, that the interloper is 

 invariably driven off for a time. 



The mown ground covers, say, a dozen square 

 yards. The small heath flits over most of this each 

 visit he pays, but nearly always he alights and rests 

 on a scrap of ground covering less that a square 

 yard. More he repeatedly sits on a certain bennet 

 of a few inches in length. Settling on another 

 bennet close by, he discovers his mistake, flits up, 

 searches around, and, finding the bennet of bennets, 

 is perched at once and at ease. It is not hard for 

 me to locate this perch, because a cut dead stem of 

 grass lies beside it. Possibly this helps the small 

 heath also to find the adored perch. But why the 

 butterfly should care for a particular bennet, when 

 there are tens of thousands all about of the same 

 character, one cannot conceive. 



150 



