INSECT LIFE 189 



I think him the choicer of the two. Of the sleeping 

 quarters and habits of this gay beauty I know little ; 

 one or two I found at rest slept head upward, not 

 like the common blue, their near relative, head 

 downward ; but perhaps this was exceptional, due to 

 some chance disturbance: I can hardly imagine the 

 sleeping habits of the common blue differ from those 

 of his first cousin. 



Nobody could doubt that to watch butterflies and 

 moths is to train the eye to beauty on a scale of 

 exquisite, if tiny, perfection ; this is absolutely plain 

 to every seeing, thinking man. But a study of the 

 habits, minutiae of minutiae, of such little things 

 how, it may be asked, can this avail human beings ? 

 Is not the man who does it rather like Browning's 

 grammarian ? Would it not be wiser to aim at the 

 million and chance missing the unit? Yes, but in 

 these units secrets of life, secrets of Whence, Whither, 

 Why, are concentrated. In the end we may know 

 ourselves through a blue butterfly as through any of 

 the more " majestic pieces " of Nature. Only we must 

 watch and record, independent of any theory, seeking 

 only truth. 



