SELMA — A special guest will speak at the Selma-Dallas County Library today from 10 a.m. until noon.

Beth Motherwell, natural history editor/development officer for the University of Alabama Press will speak about an upcoming book about butterflies in Alabama.

In August a plea went out in the community for contributors to donate money to see Selma’s designation as “The Butterfly Capital of Alabama” on the book’s title page.

Nancy Smith was the official collector of funds.

“The idea is to give the contributors an early glimpse at the photos that will be included in the book and chat just a bit about the process of bringing the book to print,” Smith said of Motherwell’s visit.

Sara Bright and Paulette Ogard have spent the better part of 14 years photographing and writing about butterflies in Alabama.

The butterfly book will launch a series of natural history books named for Philip Henry Gosse, a British naturalist who lived in Dallas County for awhile in the 1800s and wrote “Letters from Alabama chiefly relating to Natural History.”