ON THE PROWL. 
5 
great names upon them. You will also have a chance 
of learning the profundity of your own ignorance, and 
to suspect that is to matriculate in natural history. 
How abysmally ignorant we are ! For years have I been 
trying to get a conception of how the world presents itself 
to a butterfly, and as yet I have scarcely got a fact for the 
sole of my foot. The butterfly has eyes, but what are their 
powers? It can distinguish light from darkness, for as 
soon as the sun bursts through a rift in the clouds on a 
monsoon day, the gay things are on the wing, making the 
most of their short opportunity. It can also see in our 
sense up to the length of an ordinary butterfly net, for 
an extraordinary net is needful if you would catch the 
wary ones. This seeing must be of a dim sort, however, 
for, with patience and a steady hand, you may catch a 
cunning butterfly between your finger and thumb. I 
suspect a butterfly’s eyes are designed primarily for 
enjoyment of sunlight, and secondarily to give it intima- 
tion of any object moving very near to it. Then what 
about those butterflies that one sees travelling from one 
island to another in the Bombay Harbour? Do they 
go to sea in the spirit of Columbus, and is their arrival 
at Elephanta a happy accident ? I cannot tell. Has a 
