Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/70

 plant. There the sticky masses cling closer to the quaint horns which each bloom protrudes from behind the anthers, there to drop pollen grains on the stigma and insure the cross-fertilization of the flower. Thus unwittingly butterfly and bee as they sail about the sun-steeped meadow suffer discomfort for their own good, insuring vigorous crops of milkweed for another summer, for themselves or their descendants.

With these comes the smaller, Colias philodice, the sulphur, bringing with him the very gold of the sunlight. Colias philodice has many changes. Sometimes the black margins of his wings are missing and his gold melts into the sunshine and vanishes before your eyes. Another may come that is white instead of gold, a wan ghost of a colias that seems born of the mist instead of the sunshine and to vanish into nothing when he flies away, as mist does. Sometimes the colias flies up into the wood and lights, and as I come to the spot where I think I saw him stop I find nothing but a single bloom of the golden gerardia which now slips from glade to glade all along where the hard-*wood growth comes down to meet the meadow