304: BUTTERFLY MEMOIRS. 



Little, perhaps, did the author of our opening motto, little 

 the poet, who declares that 



From flower to flower, on balmy gales to fly, 



Is all they have to do beneath the radiant sky," 



seem to have thought upon the manifold changes and chances 

 of papilionaceous life. Why, then, did we not edit the Life of 

 a Butterfly ? For the simple reason, that being more scrupu- 

 lous than some of our editorial contemporaries, we did not like 

 to represent as individual experiences, incidents which might, 

 and daily do, occur to Butterflies in general ; but which we 

 could not vouch for as having actually happened to the sub- 

 ject of our Memoir. Therefore, until we are enabled by help 

 of wings to attend the Purple Emperor in his progresses 

 through air, and are sufficiently versed in the antennal lan- 

 guage (as carried on by touch and signal) to become a spy upon 

 the Painted Lady in her hours of supposed privacy, and until 

 from our knowledge of her mode of writing, as inscribed on 

 leaves, we are enabled to fathom the secrets of her correspond- 

 ence, until then, we must suspend the contemplated work 

 to which at present we confess ourselves incompetent. 



We shall be content, in the meanwhile, to give the history 

 of Butterflies in general, as it has been noted down and re- 

 corded, not in one, but in numerous individuals of the race. 

 Let it not, however, be imagined that the history of all will 

 serve for that of one, or that of one for all. There are among 



