Genus Argynnis 



Genus ARGYNNIS, Fabricius 

 (The Fritillaries, the Silver-spots) 



"July is the gala-time of butterflies. Most of them have just left the chrysalis, 

 and their wings are perfect and very fresh in color. All the sunny places are bright 

 with them, yellow and red and white and brown, and great gorgeous fellows in 

 rich velvet-like dresses of blue-black, orange, green, and maroon. Some of them 

 have their wings scalloped, some fringed, and some plain; and they are ornamented 

 with brilliant borders and fawn-colored spots and rows of silver crescents. . . . 

 They circle about the flowers, fly across from field to field, and rise swiftly in the 

 air; little ones and big ones, common ones and rare ones, but all bright and airy 

 and joyous a midsummer carnival of butterflies." FRANK H. SWEET. 



Butterfly. Butterflies of medium or large size, generally 

 with the upper surface of the wings reddish-fulvous, with well- 

 defined black markings consisting of waved transverse lines, 

 and rounded discal and sagittate black mark- 

 ings near the outer borders. On the under 

 side of the wings the design of the fore wings 

 is generally somewhat indistinctly repeated, 

 and the hind wings are marked more or less 

 profusely with large silvery spots. In a few 

 cases there is wide dissimilarity in color be- 

 tween the male and the female sex; gener- 

 ally the male sex is marked by the brighter 

 red of the upper surface, and the female by 

 the broader black markings, the paler ground- 

 color, and the sometimes almost white lunules, 

 which are arranged outwardly at the base of 

 the sagittate spots along the border. 



The eyes are naked; the palpi strongly 

 developed, heavily clothed with hair rising 

 above the front, with the last joint very small and pointed. The 

 antennae are moderately long, with a well-defined, flattened club. 

 The abdomen is shorter than the hind wings; the wings are 

 more or less denticulate. The subcostal vein is provided with 

 five nervules, of which the two innermost are invariably given 

 forth before the end of the cell; the third subcostal nervule 

 always is nearer the fourth than the second. The cell of the 

 fore wing is closed by a fine lower discocellular vein, which 

 invariably joins the median vein beyond the origin of the second 



101 



FIG. 89. Neuration of 

 the genus Argynnis. 



