128 THE butterflip:s of np:w exgland. 



best. More than this, a wagon road, eight miles in lengtli, A\in(Iing half 

 way through the primeval forest, where it forms a broad lane which the 

 butterflies covet, half-way over the rough ledges and sedgy plateaus of the 

 treeless upper region of our highest mountain, where flowers are blooming 

 all through the season to captivate the tired traveller, — this road affords 

 a ready means of learning at what altitude the valley species ascend, 

 and what kinds inhabit the inhos})itable higher levels of the mountains. 



Let us speak first of those which belong in the valleys, where the vege- 

 tation is so profuse and diversified ; and restrict our remarks principally to 

 those which are commonest here, and met with more rarely elsewhere, — 

 those which have, so far as New England is concerned, their maximum 

 development in this district. 



It is the region par excellence of that striking butterfly, Basilarchia 

 arthemis. AVhen the stage, with its city freight, winding its way over 

 the hilly roads with the first rush of travel, leaves most of the farms behind 

 it and enters the heart of the forest, flock after flock of these showy butter- 

 flies arise from the damp spots in the road where, sometimes by hundreds, 

 they are assembled to suck the moisture from the earth, and then flutter 

 about the stage in fascinating bewilderment, settling again to the feast in 

 a hesitating way as soon as the disturbance is past. Indeed they some- 

 times become a very nuisance, dozens of them when seeking a shelter 

 entering the open doors and windows of the farm-houses, and fluttering 

 about the windows in a vain and distracting attempt to escape when there 

 is any movement within. 



In the early season, when the buds are just beginning to burst, the 

 young caterpillar may be found emerging from its hibernaculum deftly 

 fastened near the tips of black-birch sprigs everywhere growing by the 

 roadside ; in July, the bristling globular egg attached to the extreme tip 

 of the pointed leaf of the same, and later the leaves eaten in peculiar 

 fashion, reveal where to look for the grotesque party-colored caterpillar, 

 scarcely to be distinguished from that of its congener, B. archippus. The 

 latter is also common (though less common than in southern New Eng- 

 land) , prefers the willow and the poplar, and may be found feeding even 

 up to the extreme limit of forest vegetation on the mountain side. 



This, too, is the New England metropolis for that high-spirited butter- 

 fly, Polygonia faunus. Unlike arthemis, it is never found in flocks, but 

 only by threes and fours at most, keeping up a constant warfare with one 

 another ; but it is still so common along the roads, and particularly in the 

 more open spots, or where the roads enter bits of forest or cross a moun- 

 tain brook, that, notwithstanding its wary activity, one may even capture 

 in favorable times a hundred in a day ; once I must have seen five hundred 

 in a single railway ride of six miles in the forest on the western side of Mt, 

 Washinorton between Fabvan's and the base of the mountain. Its cater- 



