THE WINTERERS 129 



not. The house-fly and the butterflies ought, if one may 

 say so, to perish before the face of the first frosts ; but 

 quantities live through the winter in a state that is neither 

 sleep nor waking. We discover several scores of flies 

 crowded behind a piece of wallpaper that had come loose 

 in a half-deserted room. Some butterflies, such as the 

 orange tip, live a very short life, often only a few days, 

 though one can see no special tenderness in their structure. 



Round some species a hot controversy rages ; and no 

 one knows whether they hibernate or no. They are in the 

 position of the swallows in Gilbert White's day. But as 

 knowledge grows we find more and more instances of 

 wintering butterflies. Every naturalist has found in odd 

 crevices stupefied specimens of the common admiral. With 

 many it seems just an accident. Here and there a specimen 

 settles down into a warm corner and being well treated by 

 enemies and weather tastes a second summer, and the race 

 is protected by a double safeguard. With the wasps, which 

 run a heavy risk even after they emerge from sleep, one 

 almost wonders that now and again the whole race is not 

 annihilated, so precarious is the hold on life and so flimsy 

 the protection. It is among the strangest of natural devices, 

 that the female, nursing her own fertility in lonely retreat 

 during these long hard months, should awake in the spring 

 to found by her unaided efforts a vast colony, all of whom, 

 again save selected queens, perish at the breath of autumn. 

 You may always find the last of the colony, the queen 

 excepted, feeding on the ivy flowers in sheltered but sunny 

 spots. Ivy is always a happy hunting-ground ; and October 

 is the month. The belated flowers then come to bloom, 

 and about them cling, in the last torpid struggle for life, the 

 last of the wasps and flies and the most energetic bees. To 

 quote a personal experience : * There was one little clump of 



