Libertines are hideous spiders that often catch pretty butterflies.--_Diderot._
When you didn't force yourself to think in formal reconstructions, when you didn't catch these moments of ravishments under the lens of premises and conclusions, when you didn't impale them and label them, like so many splayed butterflies, bleeding the transcendental glow right out of them, then... what?
Feelings, like flowers and butterflies, last longer the later they are delayed.
Life is like a beautiful and winding lane, on either side bright flowers, and beautiful butterflies, and tempting fruits, which we scarcely pause to admire and to taste, so eager are we to hasten to an opening which we imagine will be more beautiful still. But by degrees as we advance, the trees grow bleak; the flowers and butterflies fail, the fruits disappear, and we find we have arrived--to reach a desert waste.--_G. A. Sala._
All right. Let’s pretend I’m so incredibly happy my brain is thinking about rainbows and butterflies and I’m waving good morning to the mailman. I let my guard down. Next thing I know, something takes a dark turn. But I don’t even realize it because I’m over here staring at a bright patch of happy light. All of a sudden, I’ve fallen into a hole and have no rope, no ladder, and the walls are too slippery to climb out of. Happiness makes me lose focus. It makes me weak. I can’t stand it. Does that make sense to you now?
The feelings, like flowers and butterflies, last longer the later they are delayed.
Art is a mystery. A mystery is something immeasurable. In so far as every child and woman and man may be immeasurable, art is the mystery of every man and woman and child. In so far as a human being is an artist, skies and mountains and oceans and thunderbolts and butterflies are immeasurable; and art is every mystery of nature. Nothing measurable can be alive; nothing which is not alive can be art; nothing which cannot be art is true: and everything untrue doesn’t matter a very good God damn...
No sun, no moon, no morn, no noon, No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day, No road, no street, no t' other side the way, No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no buds.
[May one] doubt whether, in cheese and timber, worms are generated, or, if beetles and wasps, in cow-dung, or if butterflies, locusts, shellfish, snails, eels, and such life be procreated of putrefied matter, which is to receive the form of that creature to which it is by formative power disposed[?] To question this is to question reason, sense, and experience. If he doubts this, let him go to Egypt, and there he will find the fields swarming with mice begot of the mud of the Nylus, to the great calamity of the inhabitants. A seventeenth century opinion quoted by L. L. Woodruff, in *The Evolution of Earth and Man*, 1929
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. -- Lazarus Long
"One would say, to see all these snow-flakes fall, that there was a plague of white butterflies in heaven." All at once, Bossuet caught sight of Marius coming up the street towards the barrier with a peculiar air.
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows--a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues--every stately or lovely emblazoning--the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colourless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge--pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?
That day was composed of dawn, from one end to the other. All nature seemed to be having a holiday, and to be laughing. The flower-beds of Saint-Cloud perfumed the air; the breath of the Seine rustled the leaves vaguely; the branches gesticulated in the wind, bees pillaged the jasmines; a whole bohemia of butterflies swooped down upon the yarrow, the clover, and the sterile oats; in the august park of the King of France there was a pack of vagabonds, the birds.
In Floreal[34] this enormous thicket, free behind its gate and within its four walls, entered upon the secret labor of germination, quivered in the rising sun, almost like an animal which drinks in the breaths of cosmic love, and which feels the sap of April rising and boiling in its veins, and shakes to the wind its enormous wonderful green locks, sprinkled on the damp earth, on the defaced statues, on the crumbling steps of the pavilion, and even on the pavement of the deserted street, flowers like stars, dew like pearls, fecundity, beauty, life, joy, perfumes. At midday, a thousand white butterflies took refuge there, and it was a divine spectacle to see that living summer snow whirling about there in flakes amid the shade. There, in those gay shadows of verdure, a throng of innocent voices spoke sweetly to the soul, and what the twittering forgot to say the humming completed. In the evening, a dreamy vapor exhaled from the garden and enveloped it; a shroud of mist, a calm and celestial sadness covered it; the intoxicating perfume of the honeysuckles and convolvulus poured out from every part of it, like an exquisite and subtle poison; the last appeals of the woodpeckers and the wagtails were audible as they dozed among the branches; one felt the sacred intimacy of the birds and the trees; by day the wings rejoice the leaves, by night the leaves protect the wings.
This simple man sufficed for Cosette's thought, the same as the wild garden sufficed for her eyes. When she had had a good chase after the butterflies, she came panting up to him and said: "Ah! How I have run!" He kissed her brow.
Thus relieved of a grievous load, I from that hour set to work afresh, resolved to pioneer my way through every difficulty: I toiled hard, and my success was proportionate to my efforts; my memory, not naturally tenacious, improved with practice; exercise sharpened my wits; in a few weeks I was promoted to a higher class; in less than two months I was allowed to commence French and drawing. I learned the first two tenses of the verb _Etre_, and sketched my first cottage (whose walls, by-the- bye, outrivalled in slope those of the leaning tower of Pisa), on the same day. That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings: I feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings, which I saw in the dark; all the work of my own hands: freely pencilled houses and trees, picturesque rocks and ruins, Cuyp-like groups of cattle, sweet paintings of butterflies hovering over unblown roses, of birds picking at ripe cherries, of wren's nests enclosing pearl-like eggs, wreathed about with young ivy sprays. I examined, too, in thought, the possibility of my ever being able to translate currently a certain little French story which Madame Pierrot had that day shown me; nor was that problem solved to my satisfaction ere I fell sweetly asleep.
Thanks to the sand, there was not a speck of mud; thanks to the rain, there was not a grain of ashes. The clumps of blossoms had just been bathed; every sort of velvet, satin, gold and varnish, which springs from the earth in the form of flowers, was irreproachable. This magnificence was cleanly. The grand silence of happy nature filled the garden. A celestial silence that is compatible with a thousand sorts of music, the cooing of nests, the buzzing of swarms, the flutterings of the breeze. All the harmony of the season was complete in one gracious whole; the entrances and exits of spring took place in proper order; the lilacs ended; the jasmines began; some flowers were tardy, some insects in advance of their time; the van-guard of the red June butterflies fraternized with the rear-guard of the white butterflies of May. The plantain trees were getting their new skins. The breeze hollowed out undulations in the magnificent enormity of the chestnut-trees. It was splendid. A veteran from the neighboring barracks, who was gazing through the fence, said: "Here is the Spring presenting arms and in full uniform."
Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger don't come _every_ year, and so he lays over the yaller-fever, for interest, when he does come. Tom was over the stile and starting for the house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all bunched in the front door. Tom had his store clothes on, and an audienceand that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer. In them circumstances it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was suitable. He warn't a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no, he come ca'm and important, like the ram. When he got a-front of us he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them, and says:
One afternoon,--it was on one of those early days in April, already warm and fresh, the moment of the sun's great gayety, the gardens which surrounded the windows of Marius and Cosette felt the emotion of waking, the hawthorn was on the point of budding, a jewelled garniture of gillyflowers spread over the ancient walls, snapdragons yawned through the crevices of the stones, amid the grass there was a charming beginning of daisies, and buttercups, the white butterflies of the year were making their first appearance, the wind, that minstrel of the eternal wedding, was trying in the trees the first notes of that grand, auroral symphony which the old poets called the springtide,--Marius said to Cosette:--"We said that we would go back to take a look at our garden in the Rue Plumet. Let us go thither. We must not be ungrateful."--And away they flitted, like two swallows towards the spring. This garden of the Rue Plumet produced on them the effect of the dawn. They already had behind them in life something which was like the springtime of their love. The house in the Rue Plumet being held on a lease, still belonged to Cosette. They went to that garden and that house. There they found themselves again, there they forgot themselves. That evening, at the usual hour, Jean Valjean came to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.--"Madame went out with Monsieur and has not yet returned," Basque said to him. He seated himself in silence, and waited an hour. Cosette did not return. He departed with drooping head.
And in this community of Paradise, talking, singing, running, dancing, chasing butterflies, plucking convolvulus, wetting their pink, open-work stockings in the tall grass, fresh, wild, without malice, all received, to some extent, the kisses of all, with the exception of Fantine, who was hedged about with that vague resistance of hers composed of dreaminess and wildness, and who was in love. "You always have a queer look about you," said Favourite to her.
Jean Valjean's inclination led him, as we have seen, to the least frequented spots, to solitary nooks, to forgotten places. There then existed, in the vicinity of the barriers of Paris, a sort of poor meadows, which were almost confounded with the city, where grew in summer sickly grain, and which, in autumn, after the harvest had been gathered, presented the appearance, not of having been reaped, but peeled. Jean Valjean loved to haunt these fields. Cosette was not bored there. It meant solitude to him and liberty to her. There, she became a little girl once more, she could run and almost play; she took off her hat, laid it on Jean Valjean's knees, and gathered bunches of flowers. She gazed at the butterflies on the flowers, but did not catch them; gentleness and tenderness are born with love, and the young girl who cherishes within her breast a trembling and fragile ideal has mercy on the wing of a butterfly. She wove garlands of poppies, which she placed on her head, and which, crossed and penetrated with sunlight, glowing until they flamed, formed for her rosy face a crown of burning embers.
The four or five remaining hours before nine o'clock arrived, Andrea employed in riding, paying visits,--designed to induce those of whom he had spoken to appear at the banker's in their gayest equipages,--dazzling them by promises of shares in schemes which have since turned every brain, and in which Danglars was just taking the initiative. In fact, at half-past eight in the evening the grand salon, the gallery adjoining, and the three other drawing-rooms on the same floor, were filled with a perfumed crowd, who sympathized but little in the event, but who all participated in that love of being present wherever there is anything fresh to be seen. An Academician would say that the entertainments of the fashionable world are collections of flowers which attract inconstant butterflies, famished bees, and buzzing drones.
But the smiling background of her thoughts came to the front again. She continued to talk to herself, with her head resting on the pillow: "How happy we are going to be! We shall have a little garden the very first thing; M. Madeleine has promised it to me. My daughter will play in the garden. She must know her letters by this time. I will make her spell. She will run over the grass after butterflies. I will watch her. Then she will take her first communion. Ah! when will she take her first communion?"
He who writes these lines has long been a prowler about the barriers of Paris, and it is for him a source of profound souvenirs. That close-shaven turf, those pebbly paths, that chalk, those pools, those harsh monotonies of waste and fallow lands, the plants of early market-garden suddenly springing into sight in a bottom, that mixture of the savage and the citizen, those vast desert nooks where the garrison drums practise noisily, and produce a sort of lisping of battle, those hermits by day and cut-throats by night, that clumsy mill which turns in the wind, the hoisting-wheels of the quarries, the tea-gardens at the corners of the cemeteries; the mysterious charm of great, sombre walls squarely intersecting immense, vague stretches of land inundated with sunshine and full of butterflies,--all this attracted him.
LEPIDOPTERA (Gr. [Greek: lepis], a scale or husk, and [Greek: pteron], a wing), a term used in zoological classification for one of the largest and best-known orders of the class Hexapoda (q.v.), in order that comprises the insects popularly called butterflies and moths. The term was first used by Linnaeus (1735) in the sense still accepted by modern zoologists, and there are few groups of animals as to whose limits and distinguishing characters less controversy has arisen. Entry: LEPIDOPTERA
The only order of insects which has been thoroughly examined is that of the _Coleoptera_. By the persevering researches of T. V. Wollaston the astonishing number of 695 species of beetles has been brought to light at the Madeiras. The proportion of endemic kinds is very large, and it is remarkable that 200 of them are either wingless or their wings are so poorly developed that they cannot fly, while 23 of the endemic genera have all their species in this condition. With regard to the _Lepidoptera_, 11 or 12 species of butterflies have been seen, all of which belong to European genera. Some of the species are geographical varieties of well-known types. Upward of 100 moths have been collected, the majority of them being of a European stamp, but probably a fourth of the total number are peculiar to the Madeiran group. Thirty-seven species of _Neuroptera_ have been observed in Madeira, 12 of them being so far as is known peculiar. Entry: MADEIRA
The fauna of the peninsula is varied and no less profuse than is the vegetable life. The Asiatic elephant; the _seladang_, a bison of a larger type than the Indian gaur; two varieties of rhinoceros; the honey bear (_bruang_), the tapir, the sambhur (_rusa_); the speckled deer (_kijang_), three varieties of mouse-deer (_napoh_, _plandok_ and _kanchil_); the gibbon (_ungka_ or _wawa'_), the _siamang_, another species of anthropoid ape, the _brok_ or coco-nut monkey, so called because it is trained by the Malays to gather the nuts from the coco-nut trees, the _lotong_, _kra_, and at least twenty other kinds of monkey; the _binturong_ (_arctictis binturong_), the lemur; the Asiatic tiger, the black panther, the leopard, the large wild cat (_harimau akar_), several varieties of jungle cat; the wild boar, the wild dog; the flying squirrel, the flying fox; the python, the cobra, and many other varieties of snake, including the hamadryad; the alligator, the otter and the gavial, as well as countless kinds of squirrel, rat, &c., are found throughout the jungles of the peninsula in great numbers. On the east coast peafowl are found, and throughout the interior the argus pheasant, the firebacked pheasant, the blue partridge, the adjutant-bird, several kinds of heron and crane, duck, teal, cotton-teal, snipe, wood-pigeon, green-pigeon of several varieties, swifts, swallows, pied-robins, hornbills, parakeets, fly-catchers, nightjars, and many other kinds of bird are met with frequently. A few specimens of solitary goose have been procured, but the bird is rarely met with. The forests literally swarm with insects of all kinds, from _cicadae_ to beautiful butterflies, and from stick- and leaf-insects to endless varieties of ants. The scorpion and the centipede are both common. The study of the insect life of the peninsula opens a splendid field for scientific research, and the profusion and variety of insects found in these forests probably surpass those to be met with anywhere else in the world. Entry: MALAY
In the Paris Exhibition of 1900 surface decoration was the prominent feature of all the exhibits of table-glass. The carved or "cameo" glass, introduced by Thomas Webb of Stourbridge in 1878, had been copied with varying success by glass-makers of all nations. In many specimens there were three or more layers of differently coloured glass, and curious effects of blended colour were obtained by cutting through, or partly through, the different layers. The surface of the glass had usually been treated with hydrofluoric acid so as to have a satin-like gloss. Some vases of this character, shown by Émile Gallé and Daum Frères of Nancy, possessed considerable beauty. The "Favrile" glass of Louis C. Tiffany of New York (Pl. II. fig. 13) owes its effect entirely to surface colour and lustre. The happiest specimens of this glass almost rival the wings of butterflies in the brilliancy of their iridescent colours. The vases of Karl Koepping of Berlin are so fantastic and so fragile that they appear to be creations of the lamp rather than of the furnace. An illustration is also given of some of Powell's "Whitefriars" glass, shown at the St Louis Exhibition, 1904 (Pl. II. fig. 14). The specimens of "pâte de verre" exhibited by A. L. Dammouse, of Sèvres, in the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris, and at the London Franco-British Exhibition in 1908, deserve attention. They have a semi-opaque body with an "egg-shell" surface and are delicately tinted with colour. The shapes are exceedingly simple, but some of the pieces possess great beauty. The material and technique suggest a close relationship to porcelain. Entry: TABLE
_Fauna._--The fauna includes leopards, panthers, hyenas, Potto lemurs, jackals, antelopes, buffaloes, wild-hogs and many kinds of monkey, including the chimpanzee and the _Colobus vellerosus_, whose skin, with long black silky hair, is much prized in Europe. The elephant has been almost exterminated by ivory hunters. The snakes include pythons, cobras, horned and puff adders and the venomous water snake. Among the lesser denizens of the forest are the squirrel and porcupine. Crocodiles and in fewer numbers manatees and otters frequent the rivers and lagoons and hippopotami are found in the Volta. Lizards of brilliant hue, tortoises and great snails are common. Birds, which are not very numerous, include parrots and hornbills, kingfishers, ospreys, herons, crossbills, curlews, woodpeckers, doves, pigeons, storks, pelicans, swallows, vultures and the spur plover (the last-named rare). Shoals of herrings frequent the coast, and the other fish include mackerel, sole, skate, mullet, bonito, flying fish, fighting fish and shynose. Sharks abound at the mouths of all the rivers, edible turtle are fairly common, as are the sword fish, dolphin and sting ray (with poisonous caudal spine). Oysters are numerous on rocks running into the sea and on the exposed roots of mangrove trees. Insect life is multitudinous; beetles, spiders, ants, fireflies, butterflies and jiggers abound. The earthworm is rare. The mosquitos include the _Culex_ or ordinary kind, the _Anopheles_, which carry malarial fever, and the _Stegomyia_, a striped white and black mosquito which carries yellow-fever. Entry: GOLD
The habit just mentioned of forming some kind of protective covering out of foreign substances spun together by silk is practised by caterpillars of different families. The clothes moth larvae (_Tinea_, fig. 14), for example, make a tubular dwelling out of the pellets of wool passed from their own intestines, while the allied Tortricid caterpillars roll up leaves and spin for themselves cylindrical shelters. The habit of spinning over the food plant a protective mass of web, whereon the caterpillars of a family can live together socially is not uncommon. In the case of the small ermine moths (_Hyponomeuta_) the caterpillars remain associated throughout their lives and pupate in cocoons on the mass of web produced by their common labour. But the larger, spiny caterpillars of the vanessid butterflies usually scatter away from the nest of their infancy when they have attained a certain size. Entry: FIG
The _Papilionidae_ are large butterflies with ample wings, and all six legs fully developed in both sexes. The forewing has five radial and two anal nervures, the second of the latter being free from the first and running to the dorsum of the wing, while the hindwing has but a single anal, and is frequently prolonged into a "tail" at the third median nervure (fig. 58). The larva is cylindrical, never hairy but often tuberculate and provided with a dorsal retractile tentacle (osmaterium) on the prothorax. The pupa, which has a double "nose-horn," is attached by the cremaster and a waist-girdle to the food-plant in the Papilioninae (fig. 58), but lies in a web on the ground among the Parnasiinae (figs. 59, 60). The latter sub-family includes the well-known Apollo butterflies of the Alps. The former is represented in the British fauna by the East Anglian swallow-tail (_Papilio machaon_), and is very abundant in the warmer regions of the world, including some of the most magnificent and brilliant of insects. Entry: 2