i;8 SUMMER 



found drowsing with closed wings on the heads of tall 

 grasses. This is the small skipper, which follows the large 

 skipper a month later, and is the last of its family ; it is 

 familiar on the grass-banks by the ripe cornfields of late 

 July, and on hot breezy days buzzes among the scabious and 

 knapweed flowers almost like a bluebottle. It is a sturdy 

 little creature, with nut-brown wings of long and angular 

 shape. The male has a black streak on each upper wing, 

 like the large skipper. The under sides of the closed wings 

 show grey and silvery as the butterfly sleeps, and the 

 colour agrees well with the grass-head drying under the July 

 suns. But the small skipper is by no means invisible to the 

 human eye, nor presumably therefore to those of birds. If 

 one wished one could sometimes walk along the turf bank 

 dividing unenclosed ploughed fields on a cool and drizzling 

 day in July, and pick one skipper after another from the 

 grass-heads with the finger and thumb. Folding their wings 

 upright like most other butterflies, they are far more con- 

 spicuous than the dingy skippers which rest on similar dry 

 grass- heads in May and June, and have the mothlike habit 

 of resting with their wings folded along their backs. The 

 distinction between moths and butterflies is an arbitrary one, 

 in spite of its convenience ; and in the family of skippers we 

 get very close to the day-flying burnet moths. The scien- 

 tific name for butterflies is Rhopalocera, or club-horns, while 

 moths are Heterocera, or all-other-kinds-of-horns. But 

 one of these kinds the bandy-sticklike antennae of the 

 burnet moths approaches very nearly in shape to the 

 antennae of the skippers, in which the swelling at the end is 

 long and gradual, instead of round and sudden as in the 

 feelers of a white or a blue. 



Towards the end of July the second and more abundant 

 brood of wall butterflies begins to emerge, and sports among 



