EARLIEST BUTTERFLIES 



and with one flip of his crooked-edged 

 wings he was out of sight. 



Three other butterflies I saw during the 

 day in the neighborhood of my sunny 

 hollow. One, the mourning cloak, Va- 

 nessa antiopa, I always expect to see on 

 warm days in the sunny brown woods of 

 April, and am rarely disappointed. An- 

 other which took the air from the hillocked 

 ground of the two-century-old cornfield I 

 thought to be Vanessa j-album, more fa- 

 miliarly known, perhaps, as the Compton 

 tortoise. I would have been glad to know 

 this surely, for this butterfly is rather rare 

 here; but bless me, he went off over the 

 hills at a rate that shamed the flipperty 

 angle-wing. These dilly-dallying butter- 

 flies of the poet, indeed! They are the 

 busiest creatures of the whole woodland. 



Last of all was a little red chap that shot 

 through the rich gold of the sunlight quite 

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