THE Troilus belongs to the knights or chevaliers, and is a beautiful creature. His front wings are velvety black, spotted with yellow; his hind wings blue, elegantly scalloped, with a long streamer at the end, and when he lifts his wings, the underside is also lovely in marking and color. His double tongue forms a tube for sucking honey from deep flower cups, and may also be coiled up like a lasso when not used. His knobbed antenna! are supposed to be organs of scent by which he detects the perfume of blossoms or of other butterflies. For butterflies have distinct odors; the mountain silver spot smells like sandlewood, and other butterflies have the delicate fragrance of jasmine, thyme, balsam or violets. The anosia butterfly has a faint smell of honey. The sight of the butterfly, in spite of his single and compound eyes, the latter made up of many shining facets like cut gems, is not believed to be very keen. It is thought that while he perceives color in mass, he has little perception of form, and is easily deceived. The white butterflies, for instance, alight on the white-veined and spotted leaves in a garden, while seeking white blossoms. No organs of hearing have ever been discovered, and, for the most part, the movements of the butterfly are noiseless as drifting snowflakes, the only exception being a slight click from a sudden closing of the wings, or in rapid flight.

The whole structure of the creature is for movement. He has no brain, only a cluster of nerves somewhat like one; no heart, only a segmented tube, in which a white blood circulates; no distinct lungs, but air — chambers throughout the whole body, so that it is easily poised amid the aerial waves, as he glides, or flutters securely above the earth. There are many muscles, two or three pairs of legs, and about five pairs of hooked arrangements called pro-legs; and his glory lies in his four broad wings of radiant colors, covered with silvery and shining plumes of softest texture. These wings are to him as the knight's steed, bearing him proudly in his circling combats with his rivals, or in his sportive ascents with his mate, or on his gay journeys with a crowd of winged comrades along the aerial highroads. He need not seek adventures, for when he is a butterfly he has already passed through wonderful experiences.

His life begins with a tiny egg, the size of a pin-head, laid singly on the under side of a leaf for protection. Every species of butterfly has its own special food plants, and will feed from no others; but do not imagine that the pastures of our Troilus are limited. He feeds upon two of the largest and most beautiful tree families — the Rosaceoe and the Lauraceoe — beautiful for fruit, flower, foliage and fragrance. With the rose family alone the range is immense, embracing, as it does, not only the rose, but the hawthorn, the meadow-sweet, the mountain ash, the strawberry, the cherry, apple and all the lovely orchard trees, while with the other family we find the glossy and shining leaf of the magnolia tribe, and the aromatic odors of sassafras and spice-wood. The butterfly eggs are marvels of color, pale green or white at first, changing to all sorts of iridescent tints as the life inside matures, and also of form, for they mimic the delicate sea-fashions of urchin and coral, the richness of oriental mosques, and the intricacy of design in Gothic windows.

Let us fancy the egg of our Troilus fastened — a fairy cradle, indeed — on the leaf of a wild cherry tree that has tossed its sprays of feathery white bloom, and its rustling leaves all June long in sunshine and wind and twinkling shower beneath a summer sky. When the shell is broken, what a strange thing creeps forth! — well-named a larva or mask, for it is a disguise that has no trace of a winged nature. The lover of the butterfly shrinks with loathing from this hideous creature, dragging itself slowly along in quest of the food which it greedily devours the fresh, sweet leaves of the tree that has sheltered it! But unless it eats and grows there will be no butterfly, and sometimes the skin is cast off as many as five or six times, even the inner lining as well as the outside skin, to give its growth free play. If the caterpillar were large it would be terrible, for it protects itself, being soft-skinned and often helpless, by a mimicry of rage, pawing the ground, lashing its head furiously from one side to another, as a lion lashes its tail, rearing itself up menacingly in a sphinx-like attitude, grinding its mandibles with a grating sound. Its color is at first usually green like the leaf it feeds on, but it afterwards develops bright hues in some species. The Troilus caterpillar is green with a yellow stripe on each side, and row of blue dots, while its under side and feet are reddish.