HOW TO KNOW THE BUTTERFLIES 



There are several things in this world that it 

 were better to know nothing about, such as a 

 perfect passage of music or a bit of exquisite 

 color. Both were meant to appeal to the soul 

 through the senses, and knowledge about them 

 is superfluous and a distracting factor. There- 

 fore we feel a certain satisfaction in not being 

 able to give any facts about the life history of 

 the silvery blue. All that we know is that it 

 bears on its wings a blue found nowhere else in 

 the world except in the pearly spectrum of the 

 sea-shell, and that it gladdens the springtime in 

 Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin, and the At- 

 lantic States as far south as Georgia. But whence 

 it comes, or whither it goes, or what sort of an 

 herb is privileged to assist in bringing such a 

 divine bit of color in the world we know not. 



Scudder's Blue 



Rusticus scudderi (Rus'ti-cus scud'der-i) 



Plate XXXVII, Fig. 4, 5, 6 



The eyes are naked. In both sexes the costal edge of the 



fore wings is white. In the males the wings are of a uniform 



purplish violet above, narrowly margined with blackish 



brown ; in the female the violet is confined to a small portion 



of the disk of the wing, the larger part of the wing being 



dark brown. In this sex there is a submarginal series of 



roundish dark brown spots in the cells of the hind wings ; 



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