When speaking of insects one tends to think immediately of those small air-breathing arthropods who are generally referred to as creepy-crawlies. Those many-legged ambassadors to the Wyrd that manifested themselves most grotesquely in Sartre’s nauseous terror that his tongue would transform within the fleshy comforts of his mouth into a hideous black centipede.
But the butterfly, with its broad wings of many colours is also an insect, and an indisputably beautiful one at that. The greatest author of the last century, Vladimir Nabokov, was also a distinguished lepidopterist. My grandmother was so fond of these fluttersome rebukes to the repellence of insects that we all went to her funeral with butterflies in our shoes – a gesture far more fitting to her memory than any of the jittery words uttered by the vicar with his remote notions of Eden.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please make yourselves comfortable for Doctor Pockless’ Guide to Lepidoptery.