Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1878-06-19
The Fairy Tales of Schemes

Among the living pictures that the
tropics have to show, surely none can
be more beautiful than the butterflies.
Who has ever looked even at dead speci-
mems from Malacca and from Rio de
Janeiro, all stiff and dull, pinned on
cardboard with their prim companions,
without wondering at their beauty,
without visionary glimpse of the sun
pierced forest-paths, and the fruit-bear-
ing lands in which the splendid Great
ures disport themselves in life? America
is richer in butterflies than the Eastern
Hemisphere, but everywhere those Of
the tropics surpass those of the temper
ate zone in numbers and quality. The
habits of the tropical butterflies are as
various as their colors and forms are
exquisite, and true lover of them need
never be deprived of objects of contem-
plation, for though the majority are
"diurnal"-that is, of the early to bed
and early to rise persuasion-some East
ern morphid8 and an entire American
family (Brassolida) are 'erepuscular,"
like the "Buffalo gals" Of our youth.
The description of some of them, as
early in the morning they expand their
wings to the sun, and dart so swiftly
that the eye cannot follow them, re-
minds one of Shelley's embodied joy,
whose race has just begun" A consid-
cradle number frequent riversides and
the margins of pools, assembling to-
gether in flocks of hundreds of individ-
uals; but these are all males. The fe-
males remain in the forest, where in the
afternoons presumably after their no
business hours their partners join them.
Among these exquisite creatures there
are also uneatable species who, when
the crowd of floating and fiuttering
beauties disappear, to conceal themselves
amid foliage or on sticks which harmon
ize with their hues, hang in their un-
concealed gaudiness at the end of slen-
der twigs or on exposed leaves. We
should be disappointed at first with the
tropical birds, but after many days in
the forest we should fiud out the beauti-
full creatures that live in its dense fol-
iage and gloomy thickets, the parrots,
the pigeons, the perching birds, in all
the wonderful variety of those orders,
especially In that portion of the Malay
Archipelago that is East of Borneo,
and in the Pacific Islands, where mon.
keys-arboreal animals given to the
eating of eggs-are not. Only in Amer
lea should we find the humming bird,
that living marvel of color, exclusively
tropical, though it has migrant species
which visit Lake Winnipeg and the
Columbia River, making Journeys of
full 5000 miles each Spring and Au-
tumn; darting into fuchsia flowers in
the midst of snow-storm at Terra del
Fuego, and whirring about Pichincha
at IA 900 feet above the sea. IL was of
minute humming bird, found only in
the extinct crater of Chiriqua, in Vera
qua, that Mr.. Gould, said, ''It seems to
have caught the last spark from the vol
cano before it was extinguished," so
flaming is the crimson of its tiny gor-
get. These flitting gems, these beauti-
full bauble-birds are extraordinarily
brave and combative; we have complete
tournament pictures of them from Mr..
Wallace and Mr.. GOsse, and of their
numbers Mr.. Belt says that in the part
of Nicaragua where he was living they
eaualled in number all the rest of the
birds together, if they did not greatly
exceed them. How much one would
like to see the nest, "nO larger inside
tnan the half of walnut-shell, of
cup-shape, beautifully decorated with
pieces of lichen, and lined with the
finest and most silky fibres;" how gen.
tly, lest one should tarnish the two little
white eggs by breathing on them, one
would steal away from it. What pic
lures are conjured up by the Mexican
and Peruvian names of these wonderful
creatures, which mean trays of the sun"
and stresses of the day star"