“Yes, certainly. You see we monarchs are wrapped in a magic perfume—that no birds like, and so they never try to eat us. Now, Mrs. Viceroy hasn’t this perfume, and to protect herself she tries to imitate our family colours, so that the birds, mistaking her for one of us, may leave her alone too. She even flies as we do. See her over there? She is smaller than I am, but quite like me, except for the black line on her hind wings. A careless observer would scarcely notice that, however.” The monarch floated off to lay some more eggs, and Ruth found herself in the midst of ever so many tawny brown butterflies, all bordered and checkered with black, and having wings covered with silver spots. “Oh, you are so lovely!” she cried, with shining eyes, and then, as they passed on, calling back their name, “Fritillaries!” “Fritillaries!” she turned to see many other dazzling creatures fluttering about her. Some she had never seen before, but others were like old friends. There were the meadow browns, the stout-bodied coppers, the slender, beautiful blues, and more white cabbage butterflies than she could count. The handsome red admiral flirted with the pretty painted lady, and the mourning cloaks, with their purple-brown wings, yellow-bordered and marked with light blue spots, were flitting about, telling everybody how they had slept all Winter as butterflies, which is most uncommon in the butterfly world, and were for that reason the first to show themselves in the Spring. “I used to wonder why you were out so early,” said Ruth, “and once I found one of you in a crevice on a Winter day, and I couldn’t understand about it.” “Well, you do now. We hibernate like many animals.” “But you must have been eggs in the beginning,” said Ruth. “The oil beetle told me that all insects begin as eggs. And will you please tell me how a butterfly knows the right kind of plant to lay her eggs on? It always seems to be just the one her caterpillars like to eat. She doesn’t eat it herself.” “Of course not,” answered one of the mourning cloaks. “You need but look at out tongues to see that we eat only honey. I can’t answer your question, for none of us knows. Something tells us the proper plant for our eggs. We lay them there without hesitation, and we lay a great many. This is necessary, for one never knows what may happen. Most of them may make a meal for something before they even hatch into caterpillars, and if some miss this fate, and do hatch, there are any number of birds, and their enemies, who like nothing so well as a fat, juicy caterpillar for dinner. Then if that danger is escaped, there are the birds again, and other hungry things, all anxious to get a taste of the butterfly. So you can understand that in a life so full of accidents it is important to have many eggs to begin with.” “Yes,” said Ruth, “but——” She didn’t finish, for just then she put her hand on what she thought was a leaf, and, much to her surprise, she found that it was alive.