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BUTTERFLIES LOVE TO DRINK, 
BUTTERFLIES have never had a 
character for wisdom or fore- 
sight. Indeed, they have been 
made a type of frivolity and 
now something worse is laid to their 
charge. In a paper published by the 
South London Entomological society 
Mr, J. W. Tutt declares that some spe- 
cies are painfully addicted to drinking. 
This beverage, it maybe pleaded, is only 
water, but it is possible to be over-ab- 
sorptive of non-alcoholics. Excess in 
tea is not unknown — perhaps the great 
Dr. Johnson occasionally offended in 
that respect — and even the pump may 
be too often visited. But the accuser 
states that some Butterflies drink more 
than can be required by their tissues 
under any possible conditions. It 
would not have been surprising if, like 
some other insects, Butterflies had been 
almost total abstainers, at any rate, 
from water, and had contented them- 
selves with an occasional sip of nectar 
from a flower. 
MALES ARE THE SINNERS. 
The excess in drinking seems to be 
almost a masculine characteristic, for 
the topers, he states, are the males. 
They imbibe while the females are busy 
laying eggs. This unequal division of 
pleasure and labor is not wholly un- 
known even among the highest of the 
vertebrates; we have heard of cases 
where the male was toping at the 
"public" while the female was nursing 
the children and doing the drudgery of 
the household. Mr. Tutt has called 
attention to a painful exhibition of de- 
pravity which can often be observed in 
an English country lane, where shallow 
puddles are common, but never so well 
as on one of the rough paths that wind 
over the upper pastures in the Alps. 
Butterflies are moreabundant there than 
in England, and they may be seen in 
dozens absorbing the moisture from 
damp patches. Most species are not 
above taking a sip now and again, but 
the majority may be classed as "mod- 
erate drinkers." The greater sinners 
are the smaller ones, especially the 
blues, and the little Butterfly which, 
from its appearance, is called the 
"small copper." There they sit, glued 
as it were to the mud — so besotted, 
such victims to intemperance, that they 
will not rise till the last moment to get 
out of the way of horse or man. Some 
thirty years ago Prof. Bonney in his "Al- 
pine Regions," described this peculiar- 
ity, sayingthat "they were apparently so 
stupefied that they could scarcely be 
induced to take wing — in fact, they 
were drunk." 
OTHER LIQUIDS ARE LIKED. 
If we remember rightly, the female 
occasionally is overcome by the temp- 
tation to which her mate so readily 
falls a victim. But we are by no means 
sure that Butterflies are drinkers of 
water only. Certainly they are not 
particular about its purity; they will 
swallow it in a condition which would 
make a sanitarian shudder; nay, we 
fear that a not inconsiderable admix- 
ture of ammoniacal salts increases the 
attraction of the beverage. It is ad- 
mitted that both Moths and Butterflies 
visit sugar, overripe fruit, and the like, 
but it is pleaded that they do this for 
food. Perhaps; but we fear this is not 
the whole truth. The apologist has 
forgotten that practice of entomolo- 
gists called "sugaring," which is daub- 
ing trunks of trees and other suitable 
places with a mixture of which, no 
doubt, sugar is the main ingredient, 
but of which the attraction is enhanced 
by a little rum. Every collector knows 
what a deadly lure this is, and what 
treasures the dark-lantern reveals as he 
goes his rounds. True, this snare is 
fatal only to the Moth, because at 
night the Butterfly is asleep. If he 
once adopted nocturnal habits we 
know where he would be found, for he 
is not insensible by day to the charms 
of this mixture. 
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