SOME ENGLISH BUTTERFLIES 



seem the very incarnation, in light winged form, of the 

 essential spirit of May. Another of the first spring 

 butterflies which wear all the tender freshness of the 

 season is the Holly or Azure Blue, earliest of its tribe, 

 and almost more beautiful than them all in its cerulean 

 lustre, backed with a frosted silver more delicate than 

 the seed-pearl pattern of the Common Blues of the 

 June hayfields. White butterflies by the warm bank 

 where the adders bask, sun-kindled Orange-tips on 

 the white hemlock and pale mauve cuckoo-flower, 

 and Holly Blues flickering headlong out of the sky that 

 hides them across the dark sheen of their lustrous home 

 boughs all the voiceless beauty of the mounting spring 

 is in those wings, and we lose, when they vanish, the last 

 of the childhood of the year. 



The tints of the butterflies deepen as the year ad- 

 vances, and from month to month, by meadow, wood- 

 land and moor, the quivering pictures multiply that 

 they inlay with their wings among the blossoms and 

 verdure that each species loves. For each butterfly 

 has its own flowers, its scenery, its weather ; the Wood 

 Argus, if carried by rough winds into the open meadows, 

 is as sad and hurried a fugitive as Noah's dove upon the 

 unrestful waters, and there is no home among the 

 glades and shadows for the Marbled Whites of the 

 downside, or the Graylings of the heath and wold. 

 This dependence upon particular localities, and on the 



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