_Aug. 4_.--A pretty sight! Where I sit in the shade--a warm day, the sun
shining from cloudless skies, the forenoon well advanc'd--I look over
a ten-acre field of luxuriant clover-hay, (the second crop)--the
livid-ripe red blossoms and dabs of August brown thickly spotting
the prevailing dark-green. Over all flutter myriads of light-yellow
butterflies, mostly skimming along the surface, dipping and oscillating,
giving a curious animation to the scene. The beautiful, spiritual
insects! straw-color'd Psyches! Occasionally one of them leaves his
mates, and mounts, perhaps spirally, perhaps in a straight line in the
air, fluttering up, up, till literally out of sight. In the lane as I
came along just now I noticed one spot, ten feet square or so, where
more than a hundred had collected, holding a revel, a gyration-dance, or
butterfly good-time, winding and circling, down and across, but always
keeping within the limits. The little creatures have come out all of a
sudden the last few days, and are now very plentiful. As I sit outdoors,
or walk, I hardly look around without somewhere seeing two (always two)
fluttering through the air in amorous dalliance. Then their inimitable
color, their fragility, peculiar motion--and that strange, frequent
way of one leaving the crowd and mounting up, up in the free ether, and
apparently never returning. As I look over the field, these yellow-wings
everywhere mildly sparkling, many snowy blossoms of the wild carrot
gracefully bending on their tall and taper stems--while for sounds, the
distant guttural screech of a flock of guinea-hens comes shrilly yet
somehow musically to my ears. And now a faint growl of heat-thunder in
the north--and ever the low rising and falling wind-purr from the tops
of the maples and willows.
_Aug. 20_.--Butterflies and butterflies, (taking the place of the
bumble-bees of three months since, who have quite disappear'd,) continue
to flit to and fro, all sorts, white, yellow, brown, purple--now and
then some gorgeous fellow flashing lazily by on wings like artists'
palettes dabb'd with every color. Over the breast of the pond I notice
many white ones, crossing, pursuing their idle capricious flight. Near
where I sit grows a tall-stemm'd weed topt with a profusion of rich
scarlet blossoms, on which the snowy insects alight and dally, sometimes
four or five of them at a time. By-and-by a humming-bird visits
the same, and I watch him coming and going, daintily balancing and
shimmering about. These white butterflies give new beautiful contrasts
to the pure greens of the August foliage, (we have had some copious
rains lately,) and over the glistening bronze of the pond-surface. You
can tame even such insects; I have one big and handsome moth down here,
knows and comes to me, likes me to hold him up on my extended hand.
_Another Day, later_.--A grand twelve-acre field of ripe cabbages with
their prevailing hue of malachite green, and floating-flying over and
among them in all directions myriads of these same white butterflies. As
I came up the lane to-day I saw a living globe of the same, two or three
feet in diameter, many scores cluster'd together and rolling along
in the air, adhering to their ball-shape, six or eight feet above the
ground.