1 68 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



We all change, of course. Every cell in the 

 human body will have been changed for another cell 

 within a certain number of years. But that is 

 nothing compared with the changing of every cell 

 simultaneously into something as widely different as 

 the mandible of a caterpillar and the proboscis of a 

 butterfly. Memory, as we conceive it, would be 

 powerless to bridge such a revolution as that. Has 

 the butterfly, then, forgotten that it was ever a cater- 

 pillar ? Of course. Then how is it that, having 

 sated its new-found appetite for nectar, the most 

 delicate product of nature's alchemy, it repairs to the 

 nectarless, repellant nettle, and there lays the eggs 

 that shall become other caterpillars of its kind ? 

 And how, if it happens to be of so slightly varied a 

 colouring that none but a trained naturalist can 

 formulate the difference, it takes its eggs not to the 

 nettle but to the elm ? 



These and other biological problems are too 

 heavy for the hot summer days when the butterflies 

 are gambolling. In the wood the fritillaries tower 

 upward, gyrating till three of them seem to be 

 certainly four, while four fill the whole sky with 

 revolving pearl and amber. On the hillside, where 

 blue-and-purple viper's bugloss is beginning to blos- 

 som, still bluer and still more purple butterflies open 

 and tumble, then close and become triangles of silver 

 exquisitely pencilled with tiny circles in many quiet 

 colours. The meadow-browns display rosy cheeks 

 on their wings, with sparkling eyes set therein that 

 we can never persuade ourselves cannot see us as we 

 creep up to them. How many butterflies there are 

 in our short British list whose colour has run to eyes ! 



