A BUTTERFLY'S BANQUET 



fine work, can see in a butterfly. There is the 

 banquet of butterflies. Some butterflies we know 

 as rather greedy feeders. The red admirals and 

 tortoiseshells will feed on a coarse mixture of beer 

 or rum and treacle dabbed on a tree trunk or paling 

 till they tumble over tipsy, whilst the purple emperor 

 and his empress have a horrid taste for carrion. 

 But it is very different with the small skipper. Here 

 is a feeder contrasted with whom the human epicure 

 has a gross palate. 



His banqueting board is the flowerhead of white 

 clover or some wild vetchling in the July sun. 

 Visiting now one, now another, he unrolls a black 

 spring-like hair, not unlike the hair-spring of a little 

 timepiece. This implement, pointed fine as a needle, 

 looks, and no doubt is, all sensitiveness. He cu- 

 riously inserts or winds it in and out among the 

 petals and sepals of his blossom till it finds the 

 nectary that holds the choicest of all foods. One 

 may sometimes see this live hair-spring feeling its 

 way about the flower till it finds the hidden store, 

 making false shots and coming out at the sides of 

 the blossom. What amount does it draw from each 

 of the many stores it visits in the July afternoon ? 

 Something infinitesimally small. There is no weight 

 and measure table in our arithmetic that meets the 

 case. The total amount of food in aetherial form 

 which the small skipper butterfly consumes in his 

 summer day would be measureless, being so absurdly 

 minute. 



What meal, then, so refined, so daintily served 



