234 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



merce with it as we can fancy the character. This is Puella, the little 



red hawk does. girl, a slip of a thing, with compared 



Anax is imperious, " bears with to the emperor's a weak flight, but 

 no rival near the throne." The lake not a dancing or bobbing flight like 

 just now holds two emperors at least, the demoiselle's. The little girl's wings 

 besides, perhaps, their consorts, whom are of the usual crystalline texture, 

 I have not noticed. When one emperor and the body is pure bright blue, with 

 invades the other's realm, a fiery, regular rings of black. You see this 

 running duel begins. Up and down choice fly flitting over ah 1 parts of the 

 the outraged tyrant pursues the in- lake when the sun is out, constantly 

 vader, both darting, skimming just settling on the leaves of the water- 

 above the lake with their arrowy lilies and any scrap of green or brown- 

 straightness of aim. Anax has not, green that thrusts up to the air. 

 I should say, the swiftness of some On a very hot afternoon the place 

 of the moths, of the humming-bird has a tropical look and atmosphere ; an 

 hawk moth, but his is superlative effect produced by these glittering 

 flight not the less, proud and beautiful flies, dragons of the air, and the burn- 

 as that of any winged thing. ing sky blue mirrored in the dead still 



Not only the lake in the woods, but lake. But if a thrush sang by the 



the rough, boggy patches about it, lake, on such a day, the whole 



even the dry, rising ground, are now might be homely English at once, 



full of a dragon-fly of quite another The thrush is our national bird. 



XL VI 

 FIELD NOTES ON SOME ENGLISH BUTTERFLIES 



"There is a difference between a grub and a butterfly; yet your butterfly was a grub." 



SHAKESPEARE. 



A MONG the white butterflies that are the males of the orange-tip, but 

 ** flit about the meadows, and the females are without the orange 

 even the grassy margins of the high patch. The undersides of the hind- 

 roads, in May and June, will be noticed wings in both sexes are marked with 

 some that have the outer portions of greenish, and when the insects alight 

 the forewings orange-coloured. These on the white flower-heads of the beaked 



