40 SUMMER 



month. It is the brightest of the group, with less brown in 

 its wings and more gay orange-red, and this coincidence of 

 brighter colour with later appearance and a more southerly 

 distribution is suggestive. It may indicate that the small 

 meadow brown became distinct from one of the other mem- 

 bers of the group after the Ice Age ended ; or possibly that 

 it never existed, or became extinct in the northern part of 

 the country, most of which the ice-sheet covered. In all the 

 wealth of the June woods it is strange to sit in the sun and 

 think of a time when, of all our present butterflies, only 

 a handful of browns and ringlets may have basked on the 

 raw walls of the glacier's moraine, just as we may still see 

 them in the higher Alps, where this tribe is characteristically 

 abundant. A brown butterfly may sometimes be seen travel- 

 ling in the wind arid sunshine over the crests of the highest 

 snow mountains. 



When ringlets begin to appear in the dewy shadows, the 

 sunnier foliage of the woodland glades is haunted by the 

 large skipper and the small pearl-bordered fritillary. Com- 

 pared with the grizzled and dingy skippers which precede it, 

 the large skipper is a brighter and far more summer-like 

 little butterfly, and has all the sturdy liveliness of its tribe. 

 Its wings are of a rich golden brown, not unlike the tawny 

 hue which marks the fritillaries, but with less red in it, and 

 more nearly approaching a bright bay. They are dappled 

 with deeper brown, and set off in the case of the male which 

 is by far the commoner with an oblique black stripe on each 

 of the upper pair. Large skippers delight to flicker about 

 the young sprays of beech and oak and other June foliage, 

 basking on the tufts outstretched in bright sunshine, and 

 rubbing the edges of the upper and lower wings together in 

 active delight. Before they settle down to enjoy the sun- 

 shine they often pace circumspectly about the chosen leaf 

 with their stout wings obliquely raised ; then, if any other 



