THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 263 
memory of long-lost Atlantis, so compelling to 
masculine Catopsilias that the supreme effort of 
their lives is an attempt to envisage it? “Ab- 
surd fancies, all,” says our conscious entomologi- 
cal sense, and we agree and sweep them aside. 
‘And then quite as readily, more reasonable scien- 
tific theories fall asunder, and we are left at last 
alone with the butterflies, a vast ignorance, and 
a great unfulfilled desire to know what it all 
means. 
On this October day the migration of the year 
had ceased. To my coarse senses the sunlight 
was of equal intensity, the breeze unchanged, 
the whole aspect the same—and yet something as 
\intangible as thought, as impelling as gravita- 
tion, had ceased to operate. The tension once 
slackened, the butterflies took up their more usual 
lives. But what could I know of the meaning of 
“normal” in the life of a butterfly—I who 
boasted a miserable single pair of eyes and no 
greater number of legs, whose shoulders sup- 
ported only shoulder blades, and whose youth 
was barren of caterpillarian memories! 
As I have said, migration was at an end, yet 
here I had stumbled upon a Bay of Butterflies. 
No matter whether one’s interest in life lay, 
