I2 4 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



flowers which through the centuries had served the bard merely 

 as a pretty background to its quivering poise. As the lover and 

 companion of flowers, then, the butterfly is thus a botanist par 

 excellence, and as an ally of the Infinite, a botanist divine. But 

 it is not with either of these functions, so ably dwelt upon by 

 more learned pens than mine, that I am at present concerned. 

 In another more literal and prosaic, perhaps, but equally marvel- 

 lous resource the scientific classification of species the butter- 

 fly has proven a prehistoric antecedent to the fathers of botany, 

 and an oracle not sufficiently regarded in later times. 



Botanical history is full of learned dissensions among the 

 wise heads upon the botanical affinities of this or that non-com- 

 mittal plant, whether it should be placed here or there among the 

 natural orders. How many a martyr blossom has served but as a 

 shuttlecock in the learned melee, tossed back and forth for years 

 ere it found its final rest among its congenial kindred, while a 

 mere appeal to the butterfly might long ago have solved the 

 problem and brought immediate peace. 



Unimaginable ages before Linnaeus, our prehistoric botanist 

 hovered around the blossoming moraines, singling out the affini- 

 ties of nettle and nettle, saxifrage and saxifrage, and linked them 

 all in its flight. What are my authorities, is it asked ? Fancy 

 and inference inference tested by analogy, analogy reinforced by 

 present facts, and, last, the absolute seal of authority everywhere 

 imprinted in the great book of stone the witness of the fossil 

 wing and its companion tribes of extinct vegetation. 



In the delicate intaglios of the shale and bibliolite, in the 

 bead of amber we may find a full text and epitome : 



" I saw a flie within a beade 

 Of amber cleanly buried ; 

 The urne was little, but the room 

 More rich than Cleopatra's tombe." 



In the heart of this limpid shrine are entombed thousands of 

 species now extinct, while even the solid rock has divulged a 



