The female of the species

‘None but those who were deprived of their Senses would go in Pursuit of Butterflies’

THE Middle Ages were not a happy time for insects: they were viewed as the creation and instruments of the Devil, not credited with a life-cycle and widely supposed to emerge with Satanic spontaneity from ponds and rivers. Although the Greeks took a soulful view of butterflies and called them Psyche, our folkloric superstition regarded butterflies and moths as witches in disguise or spirits intent on mischief. Butterflies, specifically, were thought to steal or curdle cream and butter, a dairy disaster in a medieval kitchen—hence their name, a warning rather than an appreciation of their flutter-by flight. It followed that, in an era when learning and science were regarded as a male prerogative, women who forsook the traditional domestic pursuits and showed an intelligent interest in the