The white spots are made by hundreds of white scales and the brown blotches by brown scales, and what these scales are for nobody seems to know. Perhaps they help to grip the wind, for they have running lengthwise of them deep and parallel corrugations so small and fine that were a single scale as large as a lady's opened fan these corrugations would represent its sticks. The caterpillar from which this splendid creature came is black, with branching spines, and feeds at night on violets and other plants. The graceful beauty of the butterfly, its seemingly happy existence, its life among the flowers, where it sips the nectar that the flowers provide, are all a part of common knowledge. The real life of the butterfly, however, is not so pleasant as we think. Have you ever found a butterfly hanging beneath a leaf on a cold summer morning drenched with dew and stiff with cold? Have you ever seen one trying to cross a field in a rain-storm and observed it vainly attempting to navigate the conflicting air currents? Where do they roost at night and on rainy days? Where do they come from and what becomes of them? These are matters which it has often taken men years to find out, and even now there are many thousands of species of butterflies which are known only by a preserved specimen caught in its flight by the net of some collector. [Illustration] YELLOW BUTTERFLY (_Colias philodice_, Gdt.) The Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is so complete between the butterfly which flits over the cabbage patch and the velvety green worm that eats holes in the leaves of the cabbages that it is no wonder that for centuries no connection between the two careers of these creatures, seemingly so far apart, was suspected. In general it is true that no moth or butterfly is injurious to plants except in its larval stage, and herein has lain the clever deception which has doubtless protected these gay mating creatures of the air from the systematic attacks of man until quite recent times. This picture shows what every boy and girl should know, that every butterfly has club-shaped feelers or antennæ. It is said of certain species of yellow butterflies that the males give off a pleasing, aromatic odor which is exhaled from the front wings through hundreds of minute, slender scales--scales quite different from those with which the wings and body are covered. This scent, which is so strong that it can be detected by even our blunted olfactory organs if we rub the wings between thumb and forefinger, is supposed to attract the females in some way that is little understood. As among these particular butterflies the male seeks out its mate, it is difficult to understand why it should be the male which has the perfume, since it does not serve to tell the female where her mate is to be found. The inference is that in some way the perfume charms the female.