SEPTEMBER. 155 



BUTTERFLIES OF AUTUMN. 



But wasps belong to the discomforts rather than 

 the pleasures of "summer" in September. That 

 they eat flies would be more to their credit if they 

 left the peaches and grapes alone ; and they get so 

 abominably drowsy on chilly mornings that when 

 you discover one inside your garden-gloves you are 

 liable to be reminded with a sharp pang that winter 

 is near. So let the wasp go blundering and pouncing 

 to other clumps of flowers, while you stay and watch 

 the peacock-butterfly spreading the eyed damask of 

 his wings to the welcome sun, and the red admiral 

 shifting the angle of his outspread pinions of velvet- 

 black, splashed with white, and barred with scarlet, 

 as though desiring admiration from all sides. Hand- 

 somest of the butterflies of the year are these glories 

 of the garden in September, though they will soon 

 be hidden away in cracks and crannies with the few 

 wasps that survive October's holocaust. Perhaps in 

 January we may see our peacocks and red admirals 

 again as evidence of the " abnormal mildness of the 

 season," but they fare ill when thus untimely tempted 

 out by the winter sun. So do the queen wasps ; but 

 one has little sympathy with wasps at any time, and 

 least of all when each is prospective mother of a host. 



