THE BUTTERFLY. 



of splendid blue, changing with every change of light ; he 

 is a beauty, and he fully knows it ! Every attitude declares 

 the fact, as he basks in the noonday sun on some outstand- 

 ing branch, turning now this way, now that, slowly folding 

 and unfolding his splendours, or darting from his station to 

 chase away some rival beauty. Those who can may believe 

 that this vainglorious little insect is a fortuitous concourse 

 of atoms, moulded and modified by being for long ages the 

 unconscious subject of some process of selection. I need a 

 theory of the world with more soul in it. I cannot look at 

 the glorious creature in its overweening vanity, and believe 

 that there is no connection between the outward and the 

 inward between the splendour and the pride. The one is 

 the answer to the other, and if the beauty of that butterfly 

 really developed, then it did so in harmony with the bent 

 of an indwelling mind. Whatever theory of creation or 

 development may prevail, the animal which I see will never 

 be anything to me but the external expression of an in- 

 dividuality which I do not see, but which is none the less 

 real. 



Butterflies of some kinds especially those energetic 

 greenish-white ones of the family surnamed callidryas are 

 sometimes seized with a mania for emigrating to the far 



