VOCAL S INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC OF INSECTS. 17 



came after two seasons when the " clouded yellow butterflies " 

 hyale and edusa had respectively abounded in the South of 

 England. It was, astronomically, a year of most sun-spots, and 

 no doubt of heat-waves, when an unusual cloud of locusts passed 

 over Benares, in India. In the warm month of July, Mr. Henry 

 Buist, then living at St. Andrews, on the east coast of Scotland, 

 saw the " humming-bird moth " poise* over the flowers in his 

 garden, and when October came he started up from the flower- 

 beds a '* peacock " and "red admiral," beautiful butterflies that 

 are rarely seen on the northern side of the Tweed, although we 

 hear that in 1894 and 1899 the latter has been no rarity in the 

 seaside resorts down the Clyde, where I never noticed it. Any- 

 wise, my mother, a Scotchwoman, was quite overcome with the 

 loveliness of the Vanessa butterflies that she had not before seen 

 when she came to live in Hampshire, and I well remember her 

 taking me into an orchard planted with filberts and ribstones to 

 see the " red admirals " feasting on the rotten apples that she had 

 found a way of capturing by letting fall her pocket-handkerchief. 

 Later on, when the frost-flowers embroidered the window-pane, 

 I happened to dislodge some " peacocks " {Vanessa io) from their 

 winter sleep among the cobwebs, and Bats that depended from 

 the rafters of a hayloft, and I recall the delight I experienced on 

 beholding the proud beauties expand their inky wings on the 

 floor and disclose their iris eyes set in red velvet, while their 

 fore wings chafed on the hinder with a rustle, resembling that 

 made by the fallen leaves when stirred by the north wind they 

 moved in twinkling dance over the pathway. So likewise a 

 " peacock butterfly," disturbed when Mr. Hewitson's room at 

 Weybridge was undergoing a spring cleaning, resented the pro- 

 ceeding by spreading its wings on the floor and rubbing them 

 together with a sound of sandpaper. And it would be interest- 

 ing to know whether those Himalayan butterflies of the genus 

 Kallima he had preserved in his elegant cabinet, whose wings, 

 when closed, so exactly resembled a rhododendron-leaf purpled 

 by the frost, or a rhododendron-leaf brown and withered and . 

 mottled over with fungus, had learnt to play this forest melody. 

 Among their natural surroundings the Vanessa butterflies are 

 wont to pass the winter dormant in the hollow of old tree- 

 2ooi. 4th ser. vol. XV., January, 1911. C 



