208 OUR LADY OF THE NETTLES 



with glossy wings blazing with the colours so dear to all 

 good Germans — sable, scarlet, and white — far smarter 

 than their parents who awoke from their winter sleep 

 at Whitsuntide and, in garments tattered and weather- 

 wasted, set about laying upon the nettles those eggs 

 which were to undergo such swift and wonderful 

 metamorphosis. 



In truth, if the Red Admiral were a rare insect we 

 should make a fine fuss over it. Common though it 

 happily is, it is a creature for which familiarity can 

 never breed contempt, so thoroughly satisfying to the 

 human eye is the just balance of intense scarlet 

 and jetty black on the wings, so craftily are the snowy 

 spots set just where the black is blackest. Then how 

 masterly is the touch of azure at the edge of each 

 hinder wing — just a touch and no more, for more 

 would make the composition gaudy. 



But why, it may be asked, call an admiral our Lady 

 of the Nettles. Well, partly because the female of this 

 butterfly is more conspicuous than the male, not in 

 colouring, both sexes being of equal brilliancy, but 

 because of her superior size. It seems, indeed, rather 

 anomalous to confer upon her a rank for which, under 

 existing regulations of His Majesty's Navy, females 

 are not eligible. Secondly, because Linnseus's way- 

 ward fancy puzzles me in his choice of a scientific 

 name for this butterfly — Vanessa Atalanta. Vanessa, 

 I have always understood, was a pretty cryptonym 

 borrowed by Dean Swift for Esther Vanhomrigh, when 

 he replied to her proposal of marriage under the name 

 of Oadenus — an efiective disguise for the Latin title of 



