38 SUMMER 



appears every midsummer in pastures and hay-fields just 

 when the hay harvest is beginning. It flaps across the field 

 paths as cheerfully in the gloomiest years as in the brightest, 

 and its casual, skulking flight seems to suggest that it does 

 not know the difference. The emergence of this unpre- 

 tentious butterfly is one of the chief events in the year to 

 all who note the minor signals of the seasons. It foretells 

 the change from the days of growth to the days of ripening 

 from the lengthening to the slowly shortening evenings ; 

 and although it comes out a little before the longest day, 



LARGE MEADOW BROWN 



when there is still but small sign of the year's decline, only 

 too soon the pastures grow dark with July heat. The 

 bare hay-fields call it to the scanty and monotonous hawk- 

 weed blossoms which are all that they have to show for 

 their wealth of blossom among the June grass. 



Mountain, moor, sand-dune, and meadow find each some 

 opportunity for the virtues of this Spartan tribe, and the 

 common ringlet disregards comfort in the woods. It 

 varies greatly in numbers in different years, so that presum- 

 ably it is subject in some way to the hardships of the 

 seasons ; but certainly it does not share the antipathy of 



