He was an airy, fairy orange-tip. He had just emerged from the chrysalis, and stood poised for a moment, like a hesitating Psyche, on the flat-topped blossoming branches of a big white cow-parsnip. For the most part, he sat there, irresolute, plimming his untried wings, and half opening them tentatively from time to time, as if wondering to himself how the dickens they got there. And well might he wonder; for remember, he was bred a common green caterpillar. Never till this moment did it dawn across his mind that such a motion as flight could exist in the universe. So there he sat still, uncertain what strange change had come over him unawares. Six well-formed legs, in place of the creeping suckers on which he crawled in his youth; and what could these thin vans mean—these light and airy vans, that moved so dubiously on his soft woolly shoulders?

While his wings remained erect and closed, the under surface alone showed; and that was chequered green and white, like the flowers he sat upon. Indeed, so exactly did groundwork and insect harmonize with one another in hue and markings, that even a quick eye might easily have passed my orange-tip by unnoticed, were it not for the quivering movement of those uncertain wings, whose opening and shutting betrayed him, as I passed, to my scrutinizing survey. And this in itself was odd. For “How did he know,” thought I—“he who till lately was but a small green grub, feeding on the lush leaves and stems of cresses—that he ought now to make straight, on his emergence from the chrysalis, for this white-flowered cow-parsnip; which, indeed, is the favourite perching-place of all his race, and which effectually conceals him from the prying eyes of birds that fain would prey upon him, yet of whose very existence he, a crawling caterpillar, was till this moment ignorant? Surely that shows in his small brain some curious pre-existent picture, as it were, of this unknown cow-parsnip—a picture which enabled him to recognize it offhand when seen, and to steer for it at once with unerring instinct.”

As I watched, the timid creature, feeling his wings at last, made up his tiny mind to spread those untried vans, and venture into the unknown on the undreamt-of pinions. So he opened them wide, and displayed himself in his glory as a full-fledged orange-tip. His colours were still quite fresh, his feathery scales unspoiled by rain, or wind, or enemies. I gazed at him in delight, with sympathetic joy for his pure joy of living, as he unfolded those white wings, with their brilliant orange badge and their fringe of dark purple. For a second or two he darted off in the brilliant sunshine, rejoicing; he seemed to learn, as he went, to recall of a sudden some dim but recurring ancestral memory. All at once, as he fluttered somewhat doubtfully in mid-air, he caught sight from afar of a female brimstone. “Will he chase her?” I thought to myself; though, indeed, I knew well, had I chosen to recollect it, that inherited instinct is far too strong in these little creatures to admit for a moment such egregious errors. Our great Bashaw just glanced at her with unobservant eye; no gleam of recognition lighted up the tiny face. He passed on without one word; not a curve of the feeble flight; not a divergent pirouette of the orange-tipped pinions. Then a Clouded Yellow floated past, pursued by two rivals of her own swift-winged race. They are the fleetest of our butterflies. My orange-tip just glanced at them as who should say, “Strange that insects of taste should put up with such colouring. Why, she’s almost pure white. I wouldn’t look twice at her.” The words had scarcely thrilled through his fatuous little brain when up loomed from windward a small yellowish butterfly, not wholly unlike himself: green and white underneath, ............