BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS IN AUTUMN 57 



admiral. Its velvety black wings, laced and spotted with 

 scarlet, seem appropriate to the lengthening autumn shadows 

 on the lawn ; both alike suggest a presage of the dark days 

 near at hand. Red admirals appear later than most of the 

 rest of their tribe, and retire later in autumn ; they can be 

 seen flying on warm sunny mornings as late as November, 

 when no other butterfly but the small tortoiseshell is still 

 abroad. They haunt wild and garden flowers with the 

 peacocks and painted ladies, but are equally fond of the 

 juice of ripe and decaying fruit. Half a dozen red admirals 

 can often be seen bickering with the wasps over the fallen 

 plums and apples in the orchard ; and they will flit about 

 the garden walls for plums damaged by wasps and birds, 

 but still hanging, or sail in foraging flight round the heads 

 of the orchard trees. Their airy flight at such times recalls 

 a little the soaring of the purple emperors round the July 

 oaks. Still the wings waver among the hum of many insects 

 under a golden sun ; but the admirals fly when the sunshine 

 has the drowsy September haze, and the dews fall early and 

 dense. The pota- 

 tions of the butterflies 

 and wasps are pro- 

 longed till after night- 

 fall ; a lamp turned \ x 

 beneath the orchard [ 

 trees in the still dark- 

 ness wakes a drowsy 

 buzzing from the 

 hollowed apple-shells, 

 and sets the red ad- 

 miral creeping slowly over the scented fruit in the dewy chill. 

 The odour of the fermenting juices is heavy even to man ; 

 and to the insects it is evidently stupefying. Red admirals 



RED ADMIRAL 



