BUTTEEFDIES OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 69 



drops into the grass, where, relying too strongly on the effect of its 

 eye spots on the pursuer, it is readily caught. 



Wherever possible, this butterfly spends the night in the interior 

 of thickets, hanging from a branch, or beneath the branches of small 

 trees, preferably pines. But in extensive meadows it spends the 

 night clinging to the underside of grass blades some distance from 

 the tip. 



This species in the District area is noticeably more active and 

 alert than it is in eastern Massachusetts. In both regions the females 

 keep mostly to the borders of the woods or near the bushes in brushy 

 fields. The individuals found in the woods among the trees are, 

 so far as I have seen, always males, and those that wander out 

 over grassy areas at some distance from the woods seem to be chiefly 

 males. 



I have observed (in Massachusetts) many individuals in open 

 pastures settling themselves for the night. The butterfly alights 

 abruptly on the upper surface of a grass blade with the body hori- 

 zontal, or making various angles up to about 60° with the horizontal. 

 The wings are closed above the back, and the fore wings are drawn 

 out so that both the eye spots, or the anterior and the anterior part 

 of the posterior, are exposed. Usually at intervals of about once a 

 second the wings are opened spasmodically to an angle of about 90° 

 and at once closed again. After a longer or shorter time the butterfly 

 walks slowly downward toward the roots of the grass until rather 

 near the ground, passes to the lower side of the blade, suddenly 

 draws the fore wings in between the hind wings, and is now pre- 

 pared to spend the night. Some of the butterflies, however, simply 

 moved to the underside of the blade from their original position. 



The psychological effect of watching this rather prolonged per- 

 formance is most curious. After the butterfly has remained quite 

 motionless for some minutes it seems to dissolve into the background, 

 and one becomes conscious solely of the staring eye spots, which 

 seem to increase in size and to acquire a most forbidding aspect. 



In grassy regions individuals frequently are captured with a neat 

 angle cut symmetrically from the edge of both fore wings of which 

 the apex reaches to or penetrates an eye spot. I have even taken a 

 specimen with an angle cut to each eye spot. These nicks are made 

 by the beaks of song sparrows, or other grass-frequenting birds, 

 which apparently have been fascinated to the point of investigating 

 the uncanny apparition. 



Both this species and the grass nymph often get their wings very 

 badly cut and torn through flying out of the dense thickets or up 

 from the grass where they have spent the night, or from being blown 

 when resting against neighboring grass blades by a sudden wind. 

 But the little wood nymph, which spends the night on the underside 



