Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/36

 CHAPTER II

CERTAIN SOUTHERN BUTTERFLIES

I had not expected to find a zebra so far north, yet he galloped by the door one torrid day showing his black and yellow stripes most tantalizingly. He was so near that the brilliant red dots which are a part of his color scheme showed plainly and added to his beauty. I have said galloped; I might better perhaps have written loped in describing his flight, for the zebra of this story is not a quadruped, but a butterfly. It was I who did the galloping, net in hand, finding his easy lope hard to rival in speed. Soon, however, he fluttered to a live-oak branch and lighted while I put the net over him, or thought I did. I hauled him in with careful glee only to find a yellow oak leaf as my prize and the butterfly nowhere to be seen. Down here many people call the Heliconius charitonus "the convict." I had thought this because of his stripes. I begin to think it is because of his ability to escape imprisonment.

The zebra came as a sort of climax to two or three days of butterfly hunting extraordinary.