SOME ENGLISH BUTTERFLIES 21 



notice when high summer has multi- vanish, the last of the childhood of the 



plied its numbers. Much more beau- year. 



tiful still is the Orange-tip of the The tints of the butterflies deepen 

 May lanes and meadows, dusted and as the year advances, and from month 

 chequered with gold and green on its to month, by meadow, woodland and 

 under surface, and with half the white moor, the quivering pictures multiply 

 fore-wings of the male dipped in a that they inlay with their wings 

 brilliant orange-red. It lives out its among the blossoms and verdure that 

 life during the flower-time of the each species loves. For each butter- 

 white cow-parsley, mimicking this fly has its own flowers, its scenery, 

 blossom, which it loves to haunt, by its weather ; the Wood Argus, if 

 the fretted whiteness of its wings ; and carried by rough winds into the open 

 its pure tints brightly flushed with meadows, is as sad and hurried a 

 mounting summer seem the very in- fugitive as Noah's dove upon the 

 carnation, in light winged form, of the unrestful waters, and there is no home 

 essential spirit of May. Another of among the glades and shadows for the 

 the first spring butterflies which wear Marbled Whites of the downside, or 

 all the tender freshness of the season the Graylings of the heath and wold, 

 is the Holly or Azure Blue, earliest of This dependence upon particular 

 its tribe, and almost more beautiful localities, and on the food-plants of 

 than them all in its cerulean lustre, the caterpillars which they support, 

 backed with a frosted silver more de- has naturally had a great effect upon 

 licate than the seed-pearl pattern of the increase and diminution of parti- 

 the Common Blues of the June hay- cular species. With the gradual 

 fields. White butterflies by the warm drainage of the fen countries, the 

 bank where the adders bask, sun- Large Copper has become wholly ex- 

 kindled Orange-tips on the white tinct, and the Swallowtail is now very 

 hemlock and pale mauve cuckoo- rare and local ; on the other hand, 

 flower, and Holly Blues flickering the Large and Common Whites un- 

 headlong out of the sky that hides doubtedly owe their commonness at 

 them across the dark sheen of their the present day to the universal cul- 

 lustrous home-boughs all the voice- tivation of the cabbages and other 

 less beauty of the mounting spring is garden plants on which the cater- 

 in those wings, and we lose, when they pillars feed. Before such green garden- 



