94 SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA 



many specimens in each case agreeing in colour and 

 pattern, and recognizable and distinguishable from the 

 rest by the colour-pattern and by the " venation " or 

 "nervures" of the wings. If we collect butterflies again 

 in other years and in other parts of the country, we find 

 the same set of shapes and patterns exactly, corresponding 

 to what we have learnt to call swallow-tails, whites, 

 sulphurs, clouded yellows, tortoise-shells, etc. There are, 

 we thus learn, several distinct, unchanging kinds of 

 butterfly, which are common in this country, and appear 

 every year. Similarly we may go into a meadow in 

 spring, and gather a number of flowers, and a naturalist 

 will roughly arrange our bouquet into " kinds " ; there 

 will be the buttercups, the daisies, the clovers, the dead 

 nettles, the poppies, the roses, the orchids, etc. 



If, now, we look more carefully at our collection of 

 butterflies, sorted out roughly into kinds or species, we 

 shall find that the " whites," although holding together 

 by a close similarity in having merely white wings edged 

 and spotted with black, yet differ amongst themselves, 

 so that we distinguish a larger kind, the large garden- 

 w T hite, and a smaller, commoner kind, the smaller 

 garden-white, and we distinguish also the green-veined 

 white, and possibly the rare Bath white, each of them 

 differing a little in their spots as well as their size. 

 These different sorts of " whites " can, once our attention 

 is drawn to the matter, be readily distinguished from one 

 another, and constantly are found in our collections. We 

 thus arrive at the conclusion that, though the whites are 

 much alike, and are a kind distinct from the other kinds 

 of butterflies, yet the " whites " themselves can be divided 

 into and arranged as several kinds distinct from one 

 another. In fact, we discover (and an illustrated book on 

 butterflies confirms us in the conclusion) that there are 

 several ultimate kinds of whites which cannot be further 



