The Butterfly of Dreams
“You must not look upon butterflies as trivial,” said Laleham. “The study of much smaller things has made modern science; and a butterfly may well lead you to the ends of the earth—and even lose you among the stars. You never know where it may take you. There is no hunting more full of exciting possibilities. If you dare follow a butterfly, you dare go anywhere; and no quarry will lead you into stranger places, or into such unexpected adventures.”
He had never forgotten the day when that spell of exquisite silence and dappled sunshine—the whole woodland with its finger on its lip—had suddenly become embodied in a tiny shape of colored velvet wings that came floating zig-zag up the dingle, swift as light, aery as a perfume, soft and silent as the figured carpet in some Eastern palace. With what awe he watched it, as at length it settled near him on a sunlit weed; with what a luxury of observation his eyes noted its sumptuous, unearthly markings, and what an image of wonder and exquisite mystery it there and forever left on his mind. In a moment it was up and away upon its uncharted travel through the wood. Instinctively he ran in pursuit. But it was too late. He had lost his first butterfly.
For him, from that moment, all the beauty of the world, and the mystery and the elusiveness of it, were symbolized in a butterfly. From that moment it seemed to him that the success of life was—the catching of a certain butterfly.
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.
MENTOR GRAVURES
SPRING BUTTERFLIES
AMERICAN FRITILLARIES
ADMIRALS
A GROUP OF SWALLOWTAILS
MENTOR GRAVURES
A GROUP OF VERY COMMON BUTTERFLIES
A SWALLOWTAIL AND GROUP OF SKIPPERS