that flitting motion, however, is not to be
ascribed to restlessness, but to an eager and
untiring search lifter the plants that will supply
the sustenance appropriated to her young, upon
which to deposit her eggs. Something also in
this desultory movement is due to the claims of
hunger: when thirsty, the case is entirely altered,
for then the butterfly becomes a perfect, fixture.
For example, the members of the family of the
Tiger Swallow-tail ( Papilio Turnus), a very large
and handsome race, are very fond of assembling
to drink on little muddy spots, as many as fifty
at a time, in a space not exceeding a foot square,
and, if undisturbed, they will remain motionless
there, until the spectator is tired of watching
them. The Clouded Sulphur (Colias Philoduce)
is another of these charming mudlarks, addicted
to gathering on wet and slushy patches in flocks
of eight or ten, " so closely set together," says
Gosse, "as to make yellow spots visible a long
way off. These flocks continue at intervals, for
miles." Still, the attraction towards one
particular locality is not always drink. Butterflies
frequently gather in the driest places, where
(as Shelley tells us, in his poem, " The Sensitive
Plant") they "dream of the life to come:"

Clinging round the smooth and dark
Edge of the odorous cedar bark.

Yet it is not to be denied that the tendencies
of the Lepidoptera are decidedly erratic.
That exquisite Canadian beauty, the Spring
Azure, is by nature extremely playful: the
butterflies that bear this name consume hours in
chasing each other through the air, and though
often alighting on the ground, they remain
scarcely an instant before they are off again, and
continue flitting about over one particular spot,
which they appear most reluctant to leave. The
Black Skipper (of the Hesperian family) is
another of these gadabouts, adding to its
perpetual motion the habit of rising and falling as it
dances over the clover blossoms; and the same
propensity characterises all that come under the
denomination of Hipparchiae, which jerk up and
down throughout their flight, alternately opening
and shutting their wings, as if possessed by the
spirit of Saint Vitus.

But inconstant as many of them doubtless
are, some butterflies display a marvellous persistence,
and of their migratory tendencies and
capacity for a sustained flight, frequent evidence
has been given. It is the predatory class par
excellence, the noxious cabbage-butterfly (P.
Brassicae), whose movements in search of " fresh
fields and pastures new" have been chiefly
noticed. A prodigious stream of these devastators
was observed, one calm, sunny day, passing
over the British Channel, without a break, for
two successive hours; and Lindley tells us that,
in Brazil, in the beginning of March, eighteen
hundred and three, for many days successively,
there was an immense flight of white and yellow
butterflies, which were never seen to settle, but
proceeded straight onward, suffering nothing to
impede their course. These Brazilian butterflies
seem, however, to have made a slight mistake,

for they would find no food in the direction they
were taking, which was direct to the Atlantic
Ocean, where they must of necessity have
perished. But that buttertlies are not the wisest
animals in creation is a tradition as old as the
days of Pliny, who warns his readers not to rely
too implicitly on their early appearance, in
calculating the approach of spring. He says:
"That very yere wherein I wrote this book of
nature's work, three flights of them, one after
another, were killed with the cold weather that
surprised them thrice, for that they were stirring
too early and came abroad oversoone."

Though the butterfly may seem to be the very
type of fragility, it is not so easily killed as
might be imagined. Their mission on earth,
after they have exhausted the gaieties of the
season, is to lay their eggs and die; but, until
those eggs are laid, it is of no use attempting
to kill them. Do what you will short of crush-
ing the life out of them, they absolutely refuse
to die, and literally laugh, as butterflies only
can laugh, at the transfixing needle. Butterflies
can fight, too, upon occasion, as Gosse, the
Canadian naturalist, testifies in the account
which he gives of the Pearly-eye (Hipparchia
Andromache). "I have," he says, "known one
frequent the foot of a particular tree for many
days; whence he would sally out on any other
passing butterfly, either of his own or of another
species, and, after sundry circumvolutions,
retire to his post again. Sometimes one of the
same species, after having had this amiable
tussle, would likewise take a stand on a
neighbouring spot, and after a few minutes both
would simultaneously rush to the conflict, like
knights at a tournament, wheel and roll about as
before, and each return to his own place with
the utmost precision, and presently renew the
combat with the same results, for many times in
succession." In their elementary state, and aware
of the bright future that awaits them, the
Lepidoptera are, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek's
antagonist, very "cunning in fence." Thus the
Great Tiger-moth (Bombyx caja), which is beset,
in its caterpillar condition, with long dense
hair, when rolled up— an attitude it usually
assumes when alarmed— cannot be taken without
great difficulty, slipping repeatedly from the
pressure of the fingers. The caterpillar of the
Great Emperor-moth (Bombyx Pavonia major)
spirts out, when the spines that covers them are
touched, clear syrup from its pierced tubercles,
a shower-bath of not the most agreeable nature.
The caterpillar of the Puss-moth (B. vinula), as
well as those of several other species, have a
cleft in the neck between the head and the first
pair of legs, from which issues at the will of
the animal a singular syringe, literally bifid,
the branches of which are terminated by a
nipple, perforated like the rose of a watering-
pot. When touched, it will syringe a fluid to
a very considerable distance, which, if it enters
the eyes, gives them acute, but not lasting pain.
The Great Tiger-moth (aforesaid) has also a
fluid means of defence, having, when in its last
or perfect state, near its head a remarkable tuft