492 THE BUTTERFLIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



full blaze of the sun to marshall all the hosts ; indeed, there are few but- 

 terflies abroad in New England before seven or eight o'clock of a summer's 

 day, and long before nightfall, with closed wings, and antennae snugly 

 packed between, they arc quietly resting beneath some leaf or clinging to 

 some grass-blade. The morning seems to be the favorite time for changes, 

 at least with us, whether it be for depositing eggs, their hatching, the 

 ecdyses of the caterpillar, or the assumption of the pupal and imago states. 

 In the tropics, according to Distant, many species have a definite period of 

 the day for their flight, and the esmeralda butterfly, by Wallace's state- 

 ment, even prefers showery weather for its activities. In resting at night 

 each species has its own peculiar haunts from which it may be easily 

 stirred. Driving one morning within an liour after sunrise across the 

 sandy plains of Nantucket, along a road fringed with a row of stunted 

 pines some fifty feet from the track, a continuous stream of blue-eyed 

 graylings (Cercyonis alope) arose, stirred from the low tops of the bor- 

 dering pines by the rumble of our wagon-wheels ; none were to be seen 

 either before or behind us, but on either side they constantly arose as we 

 reached them, and, wafted by the wind, sank drowsily to the earth. Just 

 before nightfall, at the proper season, one may readily discover the Amer- 

 ican copper (Heodes hypophlaeas) or the clouded sulphur (Eurymus 

 philodice) , clinging head upward and with drooping wings to any common 

 herbage ; or watching the spring azure (Cyaniris pseudargiolus) as it rests 

 on a bough may observe it, as a heavy cloud obscures the sun, drop flut- 

 tering to the ground to alight upon a blade of grass in some concealed 

 spot beneath the shrub it had left. Gosse states (Ann. mag. nat. hist., 

 (2) ii: 176) that in Jamaica the Heliconians (H. charitonia) assemble in 

 a swarm before sunset and huddle together on the stem of a certain plant 

 for the night ; is it not possible, however, from what we now know of this 

 butterfly, that these were simply males assembling about a chrysalis of a 

 female ? 



But we are sending our friends to bed before ever they have busied 

 themselves with the day ! Their first thought appears to be of honey, 

 and off" they go, probing every flower they meet, and spending the greater 

 part of the time in this employment. Some butterflies are less greedy 

 than others, and spend long hours in sunning themselves, resting upon the 

 leaves of herbs or trees or perhaps upon the ground, gently half opening 

 and shutting their wings ; many kinds are of a lively and even pugnacious 

 disposition, and perch tliemselves upon the tip of a twig or on a stone or 

 some such outlook, and dash at the first butterfly that passes, especially if 

 it be one of their own species ; then tlie two advance and retreat, forward 

 and backward, time and again, circle around each other with amazing 

 celerity, all the while perchance mounting skyward, until suddenly they 

 part, dash to the ground, and the now quiet pursuer again stations himself 



