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The Silvery Blue (Nomiades lygdamus No-mi'a-des)

Nomiades lygdamus (No-mi'a-des lyg'da-mus) PLATE XXXVII, FIG. 1, 2, 3 Wings above pale, glistening, frosty blue, narrowly bordered in the male and widely in the female with blackish brown. Wings beneath uniform, slate brown, with or without a black spot in cell R + M of each wing, with a black line or bar bordered with white on the medial cross-veins, and with a row of conspicuous black spots edged with white crossing the middle of the outer half of the wing. On the hind wings there is an additional spot near the extremity of the basal third of cell R₁. Expanse of wings one to one and a half inches.

The adults occur in the spring in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and in the Atlantic States from the upper waters of the Susquehanna to Georgia.

CATERPILLAR.--Early stages unknown.

There are several things in this world that it were better to know nothing about, such as a perfect passage of music or a bit of exquisite color. Both were meant to appeal to the soul through the senses, and knowledge about them is superfluous and a distracting factor. Therefore we feel a certain satisfaction in not being able to give any facts about the life history of the silvery blue. All that we know is that it bears on its wings a blue found nowhere else in the world except in the pearly spectrum of the sea-shell, and that it gladdens the springtime in Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin, and the Atlantic States as far south as Georgia. But whence it comes, or whither it goes, or what sort of an herb is privileged to assist in bringing such a divine bit of color in the world we know not.