lA BLUEFIELDS. 



is indeed the case with a large proportion of the speci- 

 mens that one sees, the slender delicate tails of the 

 wings being often broken off long before the downy- 

 surface is at all defaced. After a few mornings, 

 though the numbers did not seem diminished, they 

 were evidently grown more wary, and difficult to net. 

 Except that a few individuals would occasionally 

 hover round the Mango-trees that grew near, I have 

 not found that the species affects, at least in numbers, 

 any plant but the Persea : though many fruit-trees 

 besides were blossoming at the same time. 



These beautiful butterflies occasionally fly at a great 

 elevation, far beyond that which has procured, for our 

 finest British insect, the title of Purple High-flyer. 

 I almost hesitate to say how Jiigh, yet I think 1 do 

 not at all exceed the truth when I say I have seen 

 them soar away over the open field to a height of 

 500 feet, when they were just visible as moving 

 specks of black against the bright sky. They thus 

 fully justify their name of Urania (heavenly). May 

 not the human -^i^xn draw an instructive moral from 

 the heavenward soaring of its insect symbol ? 



When one alights, unless it is to suck the blossoms, 

 it chooses a leaf, or other surface, that is nearly 

 vertical, and instantly turns head-downward, and 

 rests with the wings expanded in the plane of the 

 body ; the anterior pair, however, inclined backwards, 

 so as to form an angle with each other, and partly 

 covering the posterior ones. They chase each other 

 about playfully ; half a dozen or more sometimes 

 joining in the gambols, when their wings glitter in 

 the sun like the plumage of the Humming-birds. 



