BUTTERFLIES 



THE ordinary person is not disposed to take the 

 butterfly seriously. We do not even take the trouble 

 to keep its name pure, for one day no doubt it was 

 boffle or baffle or bother fly, a flyer that seems to 

 have no definite aim, but is blown hither and thither, 

 much as a dead leaf is baffled by the wind. If that 

 is the origin of the name, it is so thoroughly lost that 

 now no dictionary even mentions it. So much does 

 the insect resemble a caterpillar with wings that the 

 ancients decided that first came the butterfly, which 

 then shed its wings and became a caterpillar. The 

 ancients made ludicrous mistakes about other 

 creatures, but none quite so contemptuous as this. 



There are, we know, butterflies with character 

 peacocks that will come again and again to the 

 flower we would drive them from, emperors that 

 guard the upper regions of air like eagles, Camber- 

 well beauties that wrestle on high like gladiators, and 

 sweep from point to point without a superfluous wing- 

 stroke. But they always astonish us as abnormalities. 

 They do not suffice to alter our opinion of the average 

 butterfly as a senseless, meandering, scarcely self- 

 conscious thing. 



The painted butterfly ! Far less often do we 

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