WILD PASTURES 



Many butterflies, frail though they 

 seem, do pass the New England win- 

 ter successfully. The Antiopa vanessa, 

 otherwise known as mourning cloak or 

 Camberwell beauty, a handsome brown 

 fellow with blue spots and a pale yellow 

 margin, well known to every one, flits 

 joyously through the woods with the 

 very first warm days of spring. He has 

 been snugged up in some dry crevice, 

 numbed and torpid, but very much alive, 

 all winter. The first genial warmth 

 sets him free, and later I always find 

 his children browsing on the willow 

 twigs over in the cove. They are rough 

 chaps, horrid with bristling black spines 

 and with dull red spots relieving their 

 otherwise plain black hides. But they 

 grow fast, and by and by go out upon a 

 twig and hang themselves, head down, 

 by a little silken rope, swinging there in 

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