Читать книгу Life at the Zoo: Notes and Traditions of the Regent's Park Gardens онлайн

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In their scheme of colour, the butterflies are to the moths what the fabrics of Europe are to the webs of Cashmere or the carpets of Daghestan. A score of the lovely swallow-tailed butterfly may often be seen fluttering in their cage. The bottom of their glass mansion is covered with short pieces of osier-stick, each one of which is pierced up the centre with a tunnel, at the end of which lies the pupa of that strange instance of protective mimicry, the hornet clear-wing. Another case is full of the scarce pale variety of the swallow-tail, and a third of the American swallow-tail, the female of which is black, spangled with what seems a shining dust of sapphires. But perhaps the most beautiful of all the butterfly broods is the swarm of Papilio Cresphontes. At the time of hatching, the case is full of these lovely butterflies, black above, with beaded spots of pale yellow; yellow below, with beaded lines of black. When last seen by the writer, some were flying from side to side of the cage; some had alighted, or were in the act of alighting, and others on the moss at the bottom were sipping the juices of ripe grapes.