260 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 



fill and they danced and flickered in the sunlight, 

 but this was no temporary shifting to a pleas- 

 anter clime or a land of more abundant flowers, 

 but a migration in the grim old sense which Cicero 

 loved, non duhitat . . , niigrare de vita. No but- 

 terfly ever turned back, or cycled again to the 

 glade, with its yellow cassia blooms where he 

 had spent his caterpillarhood. Nor did he fly 

 toward the north star or the sunset, but between 

 the two. Twelve years before, as I passed up 

 the Essequibo and the Cuyuni, I noticed hun- 

 dreds of yellow butterflies each true to his little 

 compass variation of NNW. 



There are times and places in Guiana where 

 emigrating butterflies turn to the north or the 

 south; sometimes for days at a time, but sooner 

 or later the eddies straighten out, their little flo- 

 tillas cease tacking, and all swing again NNW. 



To-day the last of the migration stragglers of 

 the year — perhaps the fiftieth great-grandsons o^ 

 those others — held true to the Catopsilian lode- 

 stone. 



My masculine pronouns are intentional, for of 

 all the thousands and tens of thousands of mi- 

 grants, all, as far as I know, were males. Catch 

 a dozen yellows in a jungle glade and the sexes 



