128 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 
moth acting as sponsor to these hardy blossoms. Need we doubt 
that the ancestry of these tiny flowers saw the light obedient to 
the same divine plan disclosed in the blossom of to-day, or that 
the mission of their companion honey-sippers was ever else than 
at present? 
Is not the same conclusion equally irresistible with regard to 
the other strange, present functions of the butterfly, which form 
the subject of this paper and which I now illustrate—a function 
which has presumably deteriorated rather than otherwise through 
the ages. 
Deep in the damp woods of late summer we shall often find a 
constant presence flitting above the succulent herbage, alighting 
;now here now there, its bright orange wings flashing in the sun- 
beams, or gently fanning its own shadow as it rests upon some 
tempting leaf or sprig. Observe its rounds carefully. Here is a 
thick undergrowth of spikenard, ferns, bedstraw, colt’sfoot, rue, 
bidens, ampelopsis, aster, wood-nettle, horse-balm, sunflower, and 
an attendant host of plants. Our butterfly is now sunning its 
‘damask feathers on the topmost leaf of yonder wood-nettle, now 
creeping around its edge, and revealed only by the translucent 
shadow responding to the gentle fanning motion of the wings. 
In another moment we catch the fiery gleam in a sunbeam as 
' the sylph again soars above the herbage to settle among. the tall 
sunny leaves beyond; these also are nettles. Now it floats above 
our heads and alights upon the pale green plant at our elbow; 
and what is this? It is a wood-nettle. And thus it flits by the 
| hour, draping the underwood in ethereal festoons from every net- 
tle spray among the copse. 
A closer scrutiny of these plants will throw a little light upon 
this discriminating flight. The leaves are seen to be partially 
devoured, and an occasional one appears to droop with an un- 
natural attitude, a position readily explained when we discover 
the angular pitch caused by the severing of the three promi- 
nent veins close to the stem, the edges of the leaf being also 
drawn together below. Upon plucking one of these leaves, and 
looking beneath, we discover the curious recluse, at once explaining 
