Genus Argynnis 
Genus ARGYNNIS, Fabricius 
(The Fritillaries, the Silver-spots) 
u July is the gala-time of butterflies. Most of them have just left the chrysalis, 
and their wings are perfect and very fresh in color. All the sunny places are bright 
with them, yellow and red and white and brown, and great gorgeous fellows in 
rich velvet-like dresses of blue-black, orange, green, and maroon. Some of them 
have their wings scalloped, some fringed, and some plain; and they are ornamented 
with brilliant borders and fawn-colored spots and rows of silver crescents. . . . 
They circle about the flowers, fly across from field to field, and rise swiftly in the 
air; little ones and big ones, common ones and rare ones, but all bright and airy 
and joyous — a midsummer carnival of butterflies.”— Frank H. Sweet. 
Butterfly .— Butterflies of medium or large size, generally 
with the upper surface of the wings reddish-fulvous, with well- 
defined black markings consisting of waved transverse lines, 
and rounded discal and sagittate black mark- 
ings near the outer borders. On the under 
side of the wings the design of the fore wings 
is generally somewhat indistinctly repeated, 
and the hind wings are marked more or less 
profusely with large silvery spots. In a few 
cases there is wide dissimilarity in color be¬ 
tween the male and the female sex; gener¬ 
ally the male sex is marked by the brighter 
red of the upper surface, and the female by 
the broader black markings, the paler ground- 
color, and the sometimes almost white lunules, 
which are arranged outwardly at the base of 
the sagittate spots along the border. 
The eyes are naked; the palpi strongly 
developed, heavily clothed with hair rising 
above the front, with the last joint very small and pointed. The 
antennae are moderately long, with a well-defined, flattened club. 
The abdomen is shorter than the hind wings; the wings are 
more or less denticulate. The subcostal vein is provided with 
five nervules, of which the two innermost are invariably given 
forth before the end of the cell; the third subcostal nervule 
always is nearer the fourth than the second. The cell of the 
fore wing is closed by a fine lower discocellular vein, which 
invariably joins the median vein beyond the origin of the second 
ioi 
Fig. 89.—- Neuration of 
the genus Argynnis. 
