A Garden of Butterflies: (Government House, Sutton Forest)

BUTTERFLIES love hills. In this Australian hill garden, the butterflies far outnumber the flowers. I can see five Satyridse to each single dandelion. And on these lawns dandelions flourish like buttercups in Berkshire. In the valley, which is a sheer, grassy eighty feet below, there are undoubtedly fewer butterflies.

The fluttering thousands which grace this hill invariably begin their day in the kitchen garden, where the sun comes first. Even when there is no nectar of pear or apple blossom to allure them, when, late in autumn, they have for provender only a bucolic pumpkin’s yellow flowers, herbs, or the wholly undistinguished efforts of seeding vegetables, the butterflies linger here, pottering about, until a towering sun leads them over the pines and oleanders to the garden’s northern slopes, where, by noonday, Penciled Blues and Fiery Jewels dance above the china asters, and over the cactus dahlias Clover Blues and Painted Ladies weave flight patterns prodigal in beauty — a beauty that pierces and passes, spent in being as the beauty of clouds or song is spent.

Stray wayfarers from warmer, northern fields, Spotted Skippers rest on the gravel pathways, moth-wise, wings outspread. On a Michaelmas daisy’s lacy white and gold and green, three to a flower, wings up like sails, banked thick as Silver-washed Fritillaries in an English lane, succeeding fleets of Checkered Swallowtails ride at anchor, but are never still.

Mast-high above the poplars another swallowtail, a Green Fanny, makes long purposeful voyages between the camphor laurels and pittosporums. And all day long, avoiding thorned roses and shady walks, hosts of smaller butterflies parade the fragrant alleyways of fir and oak, plumed pampas grass, and dun and russet Prunus, to be with these reflected in the thirty shining windows of the old, inconsequent house; venturing by afternoon along the sundrenched avenues fringing a western garden angle, brisk coteries of Dingy Browns (palest of Satyrs) and Common Browns (so far from common) and Swmrdgrass Browns (feeding their larvae on cutty grass, abundantly near) fluttcringly forgather. They are as lovely as the whims of God.

All butterfly names are quick with meaning. There are the sylvan Owls, the Nymphs, the mystic Danaïdæ. There are the children of the Swallows, and of the Muses, and the sons and daughter of Satyrs, whose Latin names slip like syrup off the tongue. The Erychinidæ hint at Sicilian shepherd-pipings on Mount Eryx. Pregnant as a late spring rings ’Hesperiidæ,’ the Children of the Evening Star. Yet no word is as lovely as a butterfly’s wing.

If I were very rich, I would not have in my garden so very many trees (though I would have a good many), or flowers (though I would have some, planted like vegetables in a kitchen garden)—no; I would keep a scientist to procure me flights of butterflies.

Every morning I should like my butler to say, ‘The scientist, ma’am, is on the back doorstep, awaiting today’s orders.’ Then I would answer, ‘Tell him, please, to release on the perennial phlox fifty Tailed Cupids. Over the Prunus he could set free some Jezebels and Wood Whites, and take a covey of Lacewings and Leopards across to those hawthorns.’

In the spring I would say, ’I think, Darwin, you had better put, over the flowering plum trees, Marbled Blues and Indigo Flashes;over the lilacs — don’t you agree? — Parvula Skippers. Keep the wistarias just one mist of lavender with Tailed Cupids, — or are they too dark? — and Miskin’s Blues.’

(I would keep the raffish Lemon Migrant for the daffodils, so that one could never guess where the butterfly ended or the flower began — until the petals flew.)

Butterflies might be cultivated. Their tastes are known. Fiery Jewels, for instance, fancy camellia leaves, — and bring their own ant nurses with them. Checkered Blues feed on saltbushes. Jewels thrive on mistletoe. Miskin’s Blue eats cycad; Matthew’s Blue, the young shoots of the red pigeonberry tree.

Much is known of butterflies, still they are with scientists, and even with poets, a new passion, dating back at most three hundred years. As yet, Science is delicately unaware of the uses of the Glass Wing’s pouch. The behavior of those Wanderers sighted by the Espiègle, whose sailors dropped flag to them two miles out at sea, still baffles the learned.

Were these butterflies lured seaward by some siren, some itinerant instinct, shared in common with their kinsmen the hairy caddis flies, who love the water?

Wavering tremulously in traps of foam to a diamond and emerald death, to a salt oblivion in Galatea’s garden, these butterflies at nightfall were lost sight of, flying manhigh above the waves, their myriad painted fans hardily winnowing life from the unkind winds. Did they, throughout the hours of darkness, droop down in ever lower, ever heavier, flight, to lie by sunrise bleaching the uneasy sea? Did they turn landward, flying home for vespers as these butterflies fly now?

When to this hill the wonder of sunset comes, rain pools and creeks wax tawnybright. Each least, particular leaf is touched with crimson, each tree bole rimmed with cool, citrus flame. Every bough is golden, every blade of grass has its aura of light.

Pressing up through this unutterable glory, a thousand butterflies drift eastward. Lateflying Rock Ringlets linger, stock-still, on the stable wall, or, sinking valley wards, cling perilously to the river’s stone-built bridge. All the Pieridæ drop downhill to the lettuce beds, the freighted plums and costards.

Diana’s fledglings, clothed in velvet darkness, with luminous eyes and iridescent wings, shyly at dusk the moths appear, a hushed and shrinking company, brushed here and there by Ghost Moths, by the Evening Brown, the one night-flying butterfly.

(Why, in diapered dimness, this leafmimicry? Why these wing-adorning black eyes, white-centred, never seeing? Why in night-blurred shadows this sonorous redbrown, this elegantly spotted tornus?)

The last, truant Hesperiidæ, with wings alight, fly over the glittering pine trees to the kitchen garden, to shelter for the night under cold, repellent quinces, or sleep (if butterflies sleep) beneath the lilac-printed tippets of the garden tweenies, poor Rue, sweet, housekeeping Lavender, and urgent Rosemary, who cries, ‘Return! Return!’

ETHEL ANDERSON