BRITISH BUTTERFLIES 



curve, the butterfly apparently can only go forward by 

 quick little flutterings to right and left : to make 

 progress the orange-tip or cabbage white must cease- 

 lessly bob from side to side. With the butterfly we 

 see nothing of the springs, the rise and fall of the body 

 in the air, the clean, distinct closing of the wings be- 

 tween the leaps. 



The heath moth and the orange-tip butterfly get along 

 somehow, can fly against a little breeze, as with it, 

 but there really seems and here, of course, is decep- 

 tion to be no more machinery about their flight than 

 about that of a flimsy scrap of paper upheld and buf- 

 feted about by gusts of wind. This is not so with all 

 moths and butterflies, nor with beetles on the wing, 

 many flying clean and straight. 



Another curious style of flight is to be seen on the 

 railway slope. Mother Shipton's likeness is out, and 

 when she flies her wings appear half open, half closed. 

 It is the same exactly with several of the skipper 

 butterflies, and with the much larger grayling butterfly. 



But to my eyes the butterfly gem of the railway slope 

 in early June is the tiniest of them all. This is the 

 Bedford blue, which is to butterflies what the golden 

 crowned wren is to birds. Last year I saw him out in 

 May ; this year, early in June. Though so minute, he 

 is a butterfly every line of him you must measure him 

 by lines not inches far more so than the skippers, 



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