126 ROVING BUTTERFLIES. 



ing reunions has been assigned rather to their habits, which 

 being of a most laudable stay-at-home character, do not lead 

 them to those flights in the burning sun which excite the thirst 

 of their roving partners. We should be the more unjust in 

 passing over without due praise this quiet domesticity of the 

 female Butterfly, because it would never seem with her, as with 

 some of her Moth cousins, a mere virtue of necessity. The 

 latter possess, in some cases, only apologies for wings, or such 

 as are adequate only to the very brief support of their heavy 

 bodies; whereas the Butterfly, maid or matron, is furnished 

 with a pair to the full as ample as those of her suitor or 

 her mate. 



Many Butterflies have a wide geographical range, and one of 

 them, the Painted Lady, 1 is remarkable for being a denizen of 

 each quarter of the globe. With us, this elegant insect is in 

 some seasons plentiful, in others rare. Its spiny caterpillar is 

 a feeder on spiny leaves, those chiefly of the great spear-thistle. 

 Thistles, by the way, even way-side thistles, acquire in our 

 sight a thousand piquant charms as soon as we begin to notice 

 insects. We have just seen in its leaves the nursery of the 

 Painted Lady, one of our prettiest Butterflies, and they afford 

 the same to one of our prettiest Beetles, the little green Tortoise. 

 Its honey-scented flower is a load-star of attraction to a hum- 

 ming host of Hymenoptera, while to some of them, most often 

 to the red-hipped Humble-bee, it affords also a purple couch 

 whereupon at drowsy evening, as in the fading time of 

 year, we are sure almost to catch him napping. When the 

 purple of the flowers has faded also, the head of a thistle 

 remains still a tower of strength, for defence not alone of 

 vegetable life: sometimes its bristling out-works may pro- 

 tect only its own seeds, but most often they enclose also an in- 

 sect garrison, to which this bitter corn supplies provisions. 

 Minute grubs and tiny caterpillars, bright scarlet and brownish 

 white, thus live by thousands within the prickly calyx, till in 



1 Cynthia Cardui. 



