212 
NATURE NOTES 
ness. So of all the flowers, the most favoured by the insects are 
not the large and showy ones, but such as the lime and ivy 
and sallow, all of which will provide in their season a concert 
of insect musicians on a sunny day. This buckthorn flower is 
sweet, but small, and unattractive to the passer-by, whose 
attention will be caught by the hum of the bees rather than by 
the flower itself. The early spring blossoms are gone, but 
others have taken their place. The bugle holds up its stiff blue 
spike and begs the assistance of the passing humble-bee, while 
attracted by its colour the Pearl-Border Fritillaries have pitched 
upon it, and are opening their orange and black and silver wings 
to the sunshine. Wild strawberry and sanicle edge the track 
with their blossoms, and the guelder rose has spread its large 
white clusters of flowers. Flitting hither and thither all through 
the wood is the speckled yellow moth : its numbers are very 
great ; like the butterflies it loves the sunshine, although most of 
its kind are lovers of the evening twilight, and scarcely to be 
seen by day, unless startled from their resting-place by a blow 
upon a branch or disturbed by passing feet. 
In the sunny summer days this wood is a favoured haunt of 
the butterflies that hold high festival in the leafy glades. Where 
the honeysuckle and the bramble abound there will the butter- 
flies be likewise. Over the bramble flowers fly the gorgeous 
silver- washed Fritillaries : they are amongst the brightest and 
the largest of our butterflies, and as the sun pours down upon the 
white bramble flowers, these bright-hued insects flash along like 
gleams of living light. But more graceful and of a beauty 
more chaste than these are the “ White Admirals,” which sail 
with stately flight along the glades and around the trees. What 
a marvellous combination of soft colours are the under-sides of 
their beautiful wings, and what a charm there is in their every 
movement. Of all these winged frequenters of our southern 
woods, Sibylla is beyond all doubt the queen. As a pattern of 
beauty and grace of movement not one of our insects can bear 
off the palm from her. The more sedate and less conspicuous 
insects cull the honey from the flowers that border on the path : 
the “skippers” are a humble race, and along with them fly the 
sober and common “ browns.” Outside, on the heath, silver- 
studded blues join with “browns,” flitting in the sunshine, and 
tlie grayling shows how well Nature has provided it with a 
means of concealment from its enemies. Suddenly it settles 
amongst the stones or on the bare ground, and as it closes its 
wings, disappears from view : the mottled grey and brown of 
its under-side is scarcely distinguishable from the stones or soil 
on which it has pitched. This protective mimicry is well 
illustrated in many insects: the white, silky moth that rests 
within the wood on the bramble bush, scarcely to be distin- 
guished from the blossom, the caterpillars of the geometer 
group of moths, like little twigs of the trees on which they feed, 
the grey and mottled wings that protect their owners on the 
