22 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



stuff was universally grown in Eng- ranges, the tendency to such local 

 land, these Whites must have been differences is often seen at work, 

 among the scarcer English butter- Those large and handsome moths, the 

 flies. Even to-day, on such a remote Fox, the Oak Eggar and the Drinker 

 fringe of British civilization as some (of which the two former are as sun- 

 of the outer Hebrides, it is strange to loving as the Brimstone itself) display a 

 see how the Common White is a remarkable difference between the big, 

 scarce insect haunting the few island bright-coloured insects of the South, 

 gardens, while the desolate peat-moors and the small, dark race of the North, 

 are covered with the rare Large Heath, As April swells into May, and May 

 a butterfly of the waste and morass into June, the tribes of the butterflies 

 which is scarcely seen in England, and increase, until about midsummer and 

 only in certain narrow and desolate hay-time the greatest number of species 

 areas. The disappearance of the are on the wing at any one moment 

 British Large Copper is all the more of the year. In these earlier days 

 to be regretted since it formed a of summer the brightest pictures of 

 distinct island species which had ac- butterfly life are to be seen in the 

 quired, in ages of separate life, marked broken woods and copses, and all such 

 differences from the kindred butter- clean, luxuriant places where the sun 

 fly of the Continent, which is still shines freely down upon a mixed 

 anything but rare. The British race carpet of many-coloured flowers, and 

 of the Camberwell Beauty, the magni- green bosses of irregular verdure 

 ficent cousin of the Peacocks and Red mounting to the tree-tops in the light. 

 Admirals, which also seems to have As the woods and copses deepen to 

 become extinct within the memory of the full luxuriance of May, year by 

 men of middle age, had also a definite year the quiet, blossom-starred rides 

 distinction of colour which separated are filled with the chequered red- 

 it from the rich and stately insect brown wings of the two smaller Pearl- 

 still to be seen by every August visitor bordered species of Fritillary, first of 

 to the Alps or the Rhine. Even their splendid tribe. No less faithful 

 within the bounds of England itself, to the wood-ride and to May are the 

 where there is no such rigorous separa- Large Skippers, spinning from leaf 

 tion of races as is imposed by the to flower on wings of a kindred golden 

 barrier of the sea or great mountain brown, but of a hue not quite so rich 



