SOME ENGLISH BUTTERFLIES 27 



wide thyme-scented downs, and, most moment as they probe the honeyed 

 of all, on the pale purple, nodding flowers ; one keen wing-profile, or 

 scabious of the autumn pastures and brilliant eye-pattern, after another, 

 dry slopes. The most splendid but- catches the sight across the purple 

 terfly picture of all the year is one shimmer of the field, and only rarely 

 of these wide September hillsides of this absorbing insect concentration is 

 purple scabious blossom, thronged and broken for a moment as a brilliant 

 crowded with the floating and fanning Peacock or Red Admiral leaves its last 

 wings of hundreds of butterflies of a blossom and skims down the length 

 dozen different species, varying in hue of the slope, to fall again to the nectar 

 from cool pure white to the Red Ad- of the scabious bloom. The long days 

 miral's scarlet-bordered jet, and from of mellow September sunshine will 

 the fresh radiance of the Blues and soon be over, and all the brilliant 

 Coppers to the glowing, patterned butterfly congregation scattered and 

 splendour of the Peacocks and Tor- dishevelled in the storm and rain ; 

 toiseshells and Painted Ladies. Here scarcely, in the rare interludes of 

 a blossom bows beneath the weight October warmth and brightness, will 

 of a silky-bodied Brimstone, there a the last Red Admirals be seen bicker- 

 Clouded Yellow flashes its rich saffron ing with sluggish wasps and outcast 

 against the dark, earthy under-side of and perishing drones over the opening 

 the strangely fretted wings of a Comma, clusters of the autumn ivy-blossom. 

 Dragonflies cruise and hover over the Let us take farewell of the butterflies 

 length of the hillside meadow, grass- in the brilliant scabious meadow of 

 hoppers spring and chirr among the September, as they fill it with their 

 hair-poised blossoms, and a busy beauty and life, and not seek to follow 

 plebeian crowd of hive and bumble them further into the darkness and 

 bees shoulder the butterflies rudely cold. For indeed the tombs of such 

 from their foothold upon the mauve, of them as die are as unknown as the 

 button-like heads. Far and wide, sepulchre of Moses ; and those that 

 where the individual blossoms of the sleep out the long sleep into the spring 

 scabious melt into a purple haze, the we may hope to see again, heralding 

 wings of this great company of butter- the elfin cycle of the butterflies' year 

 flies shift and flash from moment to under a new and a lengthening sun. 



