It is possible that, just as a hunting-dog picks up a scent that is strong in his nostrils and has no power in ours, so the flowers that we call scentless send out an odor too faintly fine for our senses, yet one that the antennæ of moth or bee may entangle as it passes and hold for a certain clue. Perhaps the scents that are only faint to us carry far for the butterfly, but if so, and if flower perfumes are made only for the calling of insects, why need they be made so intoxicating to the human senses? The scent of carnations is as pleasing to the soul as a strain of beautiful music, and equally arouses high aspirations and noble longings. So to me the odor of the clethra at nightfall is a tenuous thread of ethereality that reaches far toward a realm of spiritual ideals. It ought to go with a ritual and a vested choir. I do not find the odor of the pasture milkweed speaking thus to any inner sense. It is just a gentle, lovable, stay-at-home smell that surely does not float farther than the pasture bars. Yet of all the plants that have bloomed within my world of garden and pasture this summer it has been by far the most popular among insects. It is not that it is the most attractive to the eye, in any of its forms, for there are many flowers of colors more vivid and to be seen farther, as well as of much stronger scent. Yet all day long you will find it besieged by bees, from the aristocratic Italian worker from the farmer’s best hive down to those scallawag bees that make no honey for themselves but lead a vagabond life and lay their eggs in other bees’ nests, leaving their young to grow up in unendowed orphan asylums. Many varieties of ants seek the milkweed blooms, and you shall find about a large clump more sorts of wasps than you would believe existed, yet it is the butterflies who most of all make it their rallying place. Every butterfly in the whole region makes it his business to know each large clump of milkweed, and to make the rounds at least daily. There, if you watch, you may see the pretty little pearl crescent, whose range is from Labrador to Texas. The shy meadow browns flit out from the shadow of the brook alders and feed for a moment before they take fright at the fact that they are out in society and flit desperately back again. The angle wings flip about like animated question-marks, and fulvous fritillaries soar sedately, now and then lighting to feed and fold their wings that you may see the big silver spots of the under parts. And so you might name them all, almost every butterfly of early August, all besieging the milkweed so eagerly that you may hardly drive them away.