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.
