SOME ENGLISH BUTTERFLIES 



coloured kinsman, the Small Meadow Brown, but also 

 the rare Large Heath and the very common Small one 

 of every waste and grass-patch, the Wood Argus, the 

 warm, stone-basking Wall or Gatekeeper, the Grayling 

 of the July wolds and moorlands, and numerous butter- 

 flies more. Often by the very side of the Swiss glaciers, 

 some sober, graceful little insect may be seen content- 

 edly basking on the hungry boulders, and this will be 

 one of the " Browns " ; and on our own Cumberland 

 mountains, never at a height much less than 2,000 

 feet above the sea, there dwells one dusky, orange- 

 flushed little creature, the Mountain Ringlet, which 

 is our special English representative of the Alpine 

 butterfly fauna, and a relic of the glacial age. There 

 is a rare pleasure in seeing this valorous film of life 

 emerging to battle with his peers and to rejoice in the 

 keen, high mountain sunshine, when the cloud-world 

 rolls away from the high Great Gable grass-slopes, 

 or the shores of Sprinkling Tarn, under huge Bow Fell, 

 and the eye ranges afar, over peak and cloven dale, to 

 Man in the western sea. 



But even before the swarm of homely, flapping 

 Meadow Browns suddenly appear with new June suits 

 in the meadows, the hayfields and open commons 

 have been mustering their tribes of butterfly life. 

 When the large ox-eye daisies begin to fill the fields 

 with pools and lakes of silver, the Common Blues appear 



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