Butterflies in the Garden 209 



in May, and can then be found settled on trees 

 or palings, with its wings wrapped cylindrically 

 round it. The moth looks like a grey-barked chip 

 or twig, with the white inner wood appearing at 

 the end. 



The buff-tip is an example of a conspicuous 

 garden moth which is born and bred within the 

 borders of the domain. The peacocks and their 

 kin usually arrive from the outer fringes of culti- 

 vated ground, where the nettle is most common, 

 rather than from more distant fields and woods. 

 But in hot, dry summers there is often an earlier 

 immigration into the garden of the typical butter- 

 flies of the open heaths and pastures, as soon as the 

 brazen suns and brief and arid nights of the dog- 

 days have parched the meadows to a pale and papery 

 brown, and robbed the tangled recesses of summer 

 vegetation of their morning dews. Though butter- 

 flies are creatures of the sun, they can by no means 

 tolerate the dry and burning heat of continued 

 drought. The lives of most of them depend on a 

 very subtle balance of sunshine and sweet rains. In 

 thirsty July weather clouds of blue and white butter- 

 flies may often be seen jostling on the wet grit in the 

 roadway, where a passing water-cart has splashed 

 out some of its store, or delicately sipping at the edge 

 of the stream beneath a village bridge, as soon as 

 the new day's sun strikes hotly upon the meadows. 

 In such fierce spells of summer weather the small 

 butterflies native to the fields the blues, and cop- 

 pers, and browns come roving from the burnt-up 

 pastures, till they find once more green grass and 

 14 



