SOME ENGLISH BUTTERFLIES 25 



emerging to battle with his peers and filmy, clouded azure seems to repro- 

 to rejoice in the keen, high mountain duce the heat-dimmed lustre of the 

 sunshine, when the cloud-world rolls skies of their native July, just as the 

 away from the high Great Gable grass- Holly Blue had the fresh skies of 

 slopes, or the shores of Sprinkling April in its wings, and the Common 

 Tarn, under huge Bow Fell, and the Blue the midsummer brightness of 

 eye ranges afar, over peak and cloven June. Most brilliant and burnished of 

 dale, to Man in the western sea. all is the colour of the Clifden Blue, 

 But even before the swarm of a local but not uncommon butterfly 

 homely, flapping Meadow Browns sud- of southern hills, where, too, the dusky 

 denly appear with new June suits in Small or Bedford Blue is often to be 

 the meadows, the hayfields and open found, dancing or drowsing, among 

 commons have been mustering their the wild down hay-crop of June, 

 tribes of butterfly life. When the The common Brown Argus is a little 

 large ox-eye daisies begin to fill the Blue that is no blue, but has the upper 

 fields with pools and lakes of silver, surface of its wings of a rich, dark 

 the Common Blues appear in their brown, with a border of orange dots ; 

 multitudes upon the blossoms of the the male of the Common Blue is also 

 standing grass, and are henceforward much smaller and duskier than the 

 a constant feature of the summer, female, but it has always a bluish- 

 They are swiftly followed by many purple gloss in the middle of the wing 

 others of their beautiful tribe ; and which distinguishes it from the Brown 

 all of them are creatures of the grass Argus, often seen dancing beside it on 

 fields and the blossoms of the grass, the same fields and hillsides. From 

 unlike the earliest Holly Blues of late May to the time of the autumn 

 April, which haunted the outer sides frosts the fields and heathy places are 

 of sunny shrubberies and thickets, also brightened by the Small Copper, a 

 Another brood of the Holly Blues kind of fox-terrier among butterflies, 

 appears, indeed, in late July or inquisitive, pugnacious, and full of 

 August ; but with this exception, vigour and brisk attractiveness, 

 the Blues are characteristic butter- Sometimes in the heat of the dog- 

 flies of the fields and downs. Most days, when the hay is all carried and 

 noticeable among them are the large, the dewless meadows parched and 

 pale-winged Chalk Hill Blues, whose bare, the Common Blues and Coppers 



