meshes where shrimps had skipped, and flies
hummed and were caught by singing jungle vireos, where armored catfish
had passed an hour or two before.

So the elements struggled and the creatures of each strove to fulfil
their destiny, and for a little time the rocks and I wondered at it
together.

In this little arena, floored with sand, dotted with rushes and
balconied with boulders, many hundreds of butterflies were gathered.
There were five species, all of the genius _Catopsilia_, but only
three were easily distinguishable in life, the smaller, lemon yellow
_statira_, and the larger, orange _argente_ and _philea_. There was
also _eubele_, the migrant, keeping rather to itself.

I took some pictures, then crept closer; more pictures and a nearer
approach. Then suddenly all rose, and I felt as if I had shattered a
wonderful painting. But the sand was a lodestone and drew them down. I
slipped within a yard, squatted, and mentally became one of them.
Silently, by dozens and scores, they flew around me, and soon they
eclipsed the sand. They were so closely packed that their outstretched
legs touched. There were two large patches, and a smaller area
outlined by no boundary that I could detect. Yet when these were
occupied the last comers alighted on top of the wings of their
comrades, who resented neither the disturbance nor the weight. Two
layers of butterflies crammed into small areas of sand in the midst
of more sand, bounded by walls of empty air--this was a strange thing.

A little later, when I enthusiastically reported it to a professional
lepidopterist he brushed it aside. "A common occurrence the world
over, Rhopalocera gathered in damp places to drink." I, too, had
observed apparently similar phenomena along icy streams in Sikkim, and
around muddy buffalo-wallows in steaming Malay jungles. And I can
recall many years ago, leaning far out of a New England buggy to watch
clouds of little sulphurs flutter up from puddles beneath the creaking
wheels.

The very fact that butterflies chose to drink in company is of intense
interest, and to be envied as well by us humans who are temporarily
denied that privilege. But in the Bay of Butterflies they were not
drinking, nor during the several days when I watched them. One of the
chosen patches of sand was close to the tide when I first saw them,
and damp enough to appease the thirst of any butterfly. The other two
were upon sand, parched by hours of direct tropical sun