In an interview re Pale Fire VN mentions the Red Admiral butterfly and spoke of the fatidic date on its hind wing said to mark the year of Alexander II assassination by terrorists in 1881, a year in which there was, he says, an extraordinary irruption of Red Admirals in Russia. Hence it became, he says,"The Butterfly of Doom" that flutters about Shade just prior to his assassination.

The 1881 may be seen on the photo below--18 on the lower left underwing and 81 on the right. Mike Catarino, entomology curator at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, kindly took the photo for me. VN butterfly expert Dieter Zimmer had previously established the presence of the 18 81 pattern. The web contains many images of the Red Admiral but all show the more colorful top side that lacks the number pattern. The classic Russian Brockhaus-Efron Encycpedia (circa 1900) mentions only an alternative reading of 786 obviously based upon "reading" only one of the wings rather than both.

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