Beautiful Butter/lies. 97 



PURPLE EMPEROR. 



PLATE IV. FIG. II. 



: .;: 



APILIO, or Apatura Iris. Ever has purple 

 been the imperial colour, that of the robes of 

 kings and emperors, and altogether great per- 

 sons, there is a fitness therefore in the name of this 

 king of British Butterflies, than whose wings no colour 

 more rich and magnificent ever decked the shoulders 

 of the mightiest monarch upon earth. To see these 

 wings in perfection, it must be in the broad sunshine, 

 and rather at a side-angle of the vision than looking 

 directly at them ; in any other than a strong light they 

 appear dull and lustreless — a rusty, dingy, brownish 

 black, with just a tinge of purple, and no more ; but 

 even then it appears a noble fly — stout-bodied and 

 strong-winged, with a flight like that of a bird, far up 

 amid and above the topmost branches of the loftiest 

 trees ; there it flies, and there it sits on some projecting 

 spray in right royal state, and where is the puny ento- 

 mologist that with rod and net shall reach it down from 

 thence ? But sometimes it descends from these elevated 

 positions to sail majestically amid the glades and along 

 the wood-side hedge-rows, and then is the time of 



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