IV 



SOME ENGLISH BUTTERFLIES 



" Unpiloted in the sun . . . 

 With idle effort plundering one by one 

 The nectaries of deepest-throated blooms." 



ROBERT BRIDGES. 



~\ yfOTHS and butterflies alike are with the shadow of specific infinity, 

 embraced in one great order it is this brilliant vitality, this natural 

 of insects, and the scientific distinc- citizenship of the sun, which marks 

 tion between them is often uncertain out butterflies among insects with a 

 and obscure. But the butterflies supreme attraction and charm, 

 have, above all, a delight of pure and When the first day comes in March 

 ardent living in the sunshine which when the air is quick with awakening 

 is the real distinction of their race, life, and the earth drinks deep of new, 

 though the needs of science may have hot, golden splendour from a sun now 

 enforced recourse to an exacter stan- high in heaven, the seal is set on re- 

 dard of discrimination based upon turning spring by the great yellow 

 the form and fashion of their feeler- wings of the Brimstone butterfly, pur- 

 tips. There are a few moths, it is posefully beating down the rides and 

 true, which love the sunshine better lanes like a visible concentration of 

 than the night ; but no single butter- the light. With him, or even before 

 fly has willing traffic with the hours him, in the illusory brightness of 

 of darkness, unless, exceptionally and some halcyon winter noon, there ap- 

 rarely, for some syrup-loving and bibu- pear three or four other species of a 

 lous Red Admiral, which may be found different family, of which the charac- 

 still clinging drowsily in its cups to a teristic predominant colour is deep and 

 rotting pear or plum in the warm brilliant red. The commonest of 

 September garden, under the canopy these early spring butterflies are the 

 of a moonless sky. Even more than Small Tortoiseshell, the Peacock with 

 the beauty of their colouring, which is his rich eye-pattern, and the Brim- 

 by no means always greater than that stones, male and female, in their 

 of the moths, or than the absence brilliant yellow and delicate primrose- 

 from among their number of that dim green. Scarcer but still regular 

 and multitudinous fringe of mote-like pioneers of spring are the Large Tor- 

 life which confuses the moth-world toiseshell, which has a tawnier dash 



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