MIDSUMMER BUTTERFLIES 39 



most butterflies for damp and drizzle. On June days of 

 fine soaking rain it can be seen flitting about the rides and 

 wet rushy patches in the woods with a movement which, if 

 not precisely animated, is at least as lively as it displays 

 on days of true June warmth. It loves the coolness and 

 shadow of the deeper grassy glades ; and it is one of the 

 most softly beautiful of all our butterflies, with an extreme 

 delicacy of bloom which could perhaps only have been 

 developed by an insect of such quiet ways and gentle flight. 

 It is very difficult to secure a perfect specimen of the ringlet 

 for a collection ; despite the utmost care in capture and 

 setting, the satin lustre of its deep green wings will show 

 some scratch. Its colour is the dark, full green of a rush- 

 stem, but darker still ; and the eye-spots common to the 

 tribe take in this case the unusual form of a variable 

 number of fine yellow circles, strewn near the margin of 

 the under side. The haunts of the ringlet are in the deepest 

 peace of the woods, and all the grace and gentleness of 

 nature are expressed in its movement and bloom. 



One more trace of a hardy evolutionary upbringing may 

 be noticed in this tribe of browns, and that is the salient fact 

 of their general emergence in this month. In the Arctic 

 regions, where a species of mountain ringlet is found about 

 as far north as butterflies exist, they must emerge in June, 

 or not at all ; for the time of the midnight sun gives them 

 a chance of active life which is at once unrivalled and unique. 

 When most of our own land lay under ice the same exigen- 

 cies of the seasons must have prevailed to a great extent 

 here, and the ringlets and other ' browns ' most nearly allied 

 to them seem to show the ancestral habit to this day. The 

 most aberrant member of the group is the small meadow 

 brown, which waits to come out until July, and is abundant 

 in lanes on the blackberry blossom which opens in that 



