But with the coming of frost and of cold comes the blighting of flowers. A feeling of torpor in consequence steals over their once bouyant spirits, and into some crevice in a barn or a wood-pile or stone-heap they creep, and there sleep the winter away, till the warmth of the sun from his southward-bound journey returning sets the brown buds a-swelling, when out of their hibernating retreats they leisurely crawl for a flying stroll through the awakening trees. Slow and deliberate their movements are, as though some grave and momentous event were dependent thereon. Never have I watched such actions, so human-like have they seemed, than the conviction has gone home to my mind that they plainly evinced a thought and a purpose, which had their origin, if not in a brain, at least in one of the several ganglions which largely make up their wonderful and somewhat complicated nervous machinery. No matter how low in intelligence she may rank, Antiopa has nevertheless, or all experience is at fault, some general ideas of the time and fitness of things. From her gloomy abode in the wood-pile she has emerged, while all the gay butterfly world, barring a few familiar exceptions, is asleep, for a tour of investigation. Her venture is seldom ill-timed, for the violets have preceded her, and from their delicately curved flagons proffer her food and refreshment. Cool and unhealthful as the mornings are at first, it is not till the sun is nearly overhead that she leaves her retreat, for what of plant-life exists is then, under the full force of his beams, at its very best. Three or four hours a day, with few intervals of rest, she is actively on wing, regaling herself with exercise and food, thus storing little by little her body with some of the strength and vivacity which were hers when the famine of winter overtook her and forced her to retirement, so as the better to prepare for that work, the propagation of her kind, which is the principal, but not the only, aim of her existence. After four in the afternoon her presence is scarce, as she has sought her old, or some other, place of shelter and security.