XXIII Butterflies in the Garden 



THESE still flower gardens of September become 

 the chosen and constant resort of many of the largest 

 and most handsome of English butterflies. Partly 

 they are drawn to the gardens because in these 

 weeks of late summer and early autumn nearly 

 every garden reaches the high-water mark of its 

 floral richness. Not even amid all the wealth and 

 riot of midsummer are the sheets of colour in a 

 garden so vivid and strong as in these later harvest 

 days, when most of the tallest and stateliest of 

 garden flowers are in bloom, and the general standard 

 of colour is many shades deeper and richer than it 

 was in the freshness of June. But the concentration 

 of butterflies in the September garden is due even 

 more to the comparative absence of blossom at 

 this season of the year over large tracts of the 

 country outside. For many weeks the fields which 

 were so rich with the flowers of the hay-crop in 

 June have been vivid, perhaps, with a rain-quickened 

 aftermath, but almost wholly void of blossom. 

 There are few blooms in an August hayfield but 

 a few white yarrow- heads and a sprinkling of 

 yellow hawkweed. With the reaping of the harvest, 

 the cornfields become equally unproductive from 

 the butterflies' point of view ; while there are but 

 few flowers left blooming among the rank and over- 



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