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 antennæ 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 tension once slackened, the butterflies took up their more usual lives. But what could I know of the meaning of "normal" in the life of a butterfly--I who boasted a miserable single pair of eyes and no greater number of legs, whose shoulders supported only shoulder blades, and whose youth was barren of caterpillarian memories!