THE FAERY YEAR 



leaves, and, finding these unfit for an egg, bob off a 

 little way. But sometimes three and four times she 

 will bob back to the same spot to examine each time 

 afresh these withered leaves. We know why the 

 humming-bird hawk moth (which has been among 

 my violas this week once more) hangs stationary in 

 the air over flowers so stationary, a friend asked 

 me the other day was it suspended or not. But why 

 does the pearl skipper, with some of the moths of 

 its own physique, sometimes sit on a leaf, or the 

 ground, vibrating its wings intensely ? Why the 

 frantic haste of the grayling butterfly and this little 

 argus brown ? Why over the hedge and back again 

 as if for dear life up and down a slope like mad 

 over a thousand blooms of small scabious or bird's- 

 foot trefoil, only to settle, after all, on one of these ? 

 The idea these performances give is one of a random, 

 feather-headed creature with about as much fixed 

 purpose, deliberate plan, as that of dandelion seed in 

 a gale. Yet I believe the grayling and argus butter- 

 flies are both in haste to good purpose. 



One fact in butterfly life has much impressed me 

 this summer. Until we come to watch the move- 

 ments of butterflies on flowers closely and often, we 

 scarcely realize how large such insect agency may be 

 in the work of carrying pollen from plant to plant. 

 Butterflies play a more important part in this than 

 I imagined, and I like to note the way in which 

 certain kinds of butterflies specialize on certain 

 plants for days together. Thanks to this, less pollen 

 is wasted than would be if butterflies went carelessly 

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