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golden border and some of the blue diamonds too, if you look very carefully.

In the North Woods where I spent my young days, the first butterfly to be seen in the springtime was the Mourning-cloak, and the reason we saw it so early in the season, yes, even in the snowtime, was because this is one of the Butterflies that sometimes sleep all winter, and so live in two different seasons.

Its eggs are laid on the willows, elms, or poplars, in early springtime. The young soon hatch, and eat so much, and grow so fast, that five weeks after the eggs are laid, and three after they are hatched, the caterpillar is full grown, and hangs itself up as a chrysalis under some sheltering board or rail. In two weeks more, the wonderful event takes place, the perfect Butterfly comes forth; and there is another Mourning-cloak to liven the roadside, and amaze us with its half-hidden beauty.

TALE 14

The Wandering Monarch

Did you ever read the old Greek story of Ulysses, King of Ithaca, the Wandering Monarch, who for twenty years roamed over sea and land away from home — always trying to get back, but doomed to keep on travelling, homesick and weary, but still moving on; ujitil his name became a byword for wandering?

In our own woods and our own fields in America we have a Wandering Monarch — the "Big Red Butterfly" as we children called it — the "Monarch" as it is named by the butterfly catchers.

It is called the "Wanderer" chiefly because it is the only one of our Butterflies that migrates like the birds. In the ..text pokračuje