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insects were usually rather evenly distributed, each with a few yards
of clear space about it, but very rarely--I have seen it only twice--a
new force became operative. Not only were the little volant beings
siphoned up in untold numbers from their normal life of sleeping,
feeding, dancing about their mates, but they were blindly poured into
an invisible artery, down which they flowed in close association,
_veritables corpuscules de papillons_, almost touching, forming a
bending ribbon, winding its way seaward, with here and there a
temporary fraying out of eddying wings. It seemed like a wayward
cloud still stained with last night's sunset yellow, which had set out
on its own path over rivers and jungles to join the sea mists beyond
the uttermost trees.

Such a swarm seemed imbued with an ecstasy of travel which surpassed
discomfort. Deep cloud shadows might settle down, but only dimmed the
painted wings; under raindrops the ribbon sagged, the insects flying
closer to the water. On the other hand, the scattered hosts of the
more ordinary migrations, while they turned neither to the north nor
to the west, yet fled at the advent of clouds and rain, seeking
shelter under the nearest foliage. So much loitering was permitted,
but with the coming of the sun again they must desert the pleasant
feel of velvet leaves, the rain-washed odors of streaming blossoms,
and set their antennae unquestioningly upon the strange last turn of
their wheel of life.

What crime of ancestors are they expiating? In some forgotten
caterpillardom was an act committed, so terrible that it can never be
known, except through the working out of the karma upon millions of
butterflies? Or does there linger in the innumerable little ganglion
minds a memory of long-lost Atlantis, so compelling to masculine
Catopsilias that the supreme effort of their lives is an attempt to
envisage it? "Absurd fancies, all," says our conscious entomological
sense, and we agree and sweep them aside. And then quite as readily,
more reasonable scientific theories fall asunder, and we are left at
last alone with the butterflies, a vast ignorance, and a great
unfulfilled desire to know what it all means.

On this October day the migration of the year had ceased. To my coarse
senses the sunlight was of equal intensity, the breeze unchanged, the
whole aspect the same--and yet something as intangible as thought, as
impelling as gravitation, had ceased to operate. The tensi