142 WILD BIRDS 



and the intense note of the ring doves throughout the 

 dying bloom and the silence at the close of summer 

 in woodlands. 



The first phase of the redbreast autumn song 

 follows, and a little later the close of one bird year 

 and the start of another. 



THE BUTTERFLY YEAR 



October ends a year of English butterflies as it 

 ends a year of English birds ends it with the 

 splendour of the red admiral butterfly. But there 

 is this great difference between the two endings ; 

 no sooner is a year of birds over in autumn than a 

 fresh year begins ; whereas, with butterflies, we 

 must wait for the fresh season till the sulphur butter- 

 fly rouses from its six months of death-like trance 

 to fly in the sun of that first mild day in March day 

 with " each minute sweeter than before." 



Butterflies have almost the fame that birds have 

 in allegory and fable. The idea of a butterfly, the 

 thing beyond all things of the sun, has an almost 

 elemental appeal for us. It is in English litera- 

 ture, has probably run through literature from the 

 start, so that it seems rather strange that people 

 are much less interested and less informed in the 

 life and habits of butterflies than in those of birds. 

 For one person who knows by name or by sight 

 a common English butterfly, a thousand know a 

 common bird ; and, as for familiar wayside plants, 

 they are known to people even better than are the 

 birds. We are not quite so backward in butterflies, 



