THROUGH THE YEAR 67 



The wall butterfly flies in the least leafy places, 

 often settling on the dusty road or track, and casting 

 itself into sun trances in spots that look least fit 

 for butterflies. The wall butterfly reminds me of 

 the corn bunting in its carelessness as to environ- 

 ment : the shoddiest places on the outer fringe of 

 towns, where land is " ripening " for the builder, will 

 do well for either. 



I have found this butterfly quite at home among 

 the cast-off kettles, the broken crocks, the make-shift 

 posts or palings that fence thistle plots destined for 

 unthinkable gardens : though I have found it too 

 on the glorious hills of Sicily among the wild palms, 

 and down in the Sahara Desert. 



Only give a bunting a dusty bush or clod of 

 clay to sit upon and stutter from, only give a wall 

 butterfly the glare and burn of the sun, and they 

 are happy. 



But the speckled-wood's lines are cast only in 

 lovely places. He does not haunt highly " eligible " 

 building plots or " residential " districts. He wants 

 the true wood lane, or the footpath winding through 

 the woody glen. He is an epicure in environment. 

 In a glen in Cornwall I met with the speckled-wood. 

 A little trout stream babbles down the kieve and the 

 sides of the glen are covered thick with oak and 

 sycamore and ash trees. Pennywort with the 

 curious green blossom grows in every chink of slate 

 rock, and the wood-sorrel is at home here as in the 

 Highland or Yorkshire glen. 



The speckled-wood sits and suns on a bramble 



