THE BUTTERFLY'S DRESSMAKER 



Hours of an August day are thus banqueted 

 away by the sybarite ; but let a few clouds come up, 

 and it is off to bed. By four o'clock on Tuesday 

 afternoon every small copper, blue-brown argus, and 

 small heath had gone to bed and was fast asleep 

 the small heath so fast that I could not push him off 

 his brown plantain head with a plucked grass bent. 

 He slept in the remarkable horizontal position, just 

 as I found him sleeping weeks ago in another dis- 

 trict ; this is his natural, almost invariable sleeping 

 posture. He looks rather a moping, lack-lustre 

 little thing beside the copper. The coppers, without 

 exception, slept on their grass head or stem, head 

 downward like the common blues ; and two brown 

 argus butterflies, which I found on the grass stems, 

 were in the same posture. So intent is the copper 

 to keep its head down in sleep that, when disturbed, 

 it flies to another grass, climbs up, and usually turns 

 round on reaching the top to fix itself thus. If the 

 hour is late and cold, and they are disturbed from 

 their perch, the blues will settle anywhere even on 

 the ground fold their wings tight, and go to sleep 

 with head up instead of down ; and I have no doubt 

 the copper and brown argus at such a time will do 

 the same. A female orange-tip butterfly, which I 

 lifted from off her perch at sunset, and dropped in 

 the air, fluttered headlong and helpless to the ground, 

 and there sank into profound repose again. 



But the potent drug of sleep may well master 

 other habits and instincts in the insect. The care- 

 lessness of blues or coppers in these cases as to how 



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