188 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



matching his perch. We watched a meadow-brown, 

 disturbed by large rain-drops, perch on a birch twig, 

 and put away his " eye," and we agreed he might pass 

 for a dead leaf. But other small skippers, small and 

 large kinds, slept on seeding grass heads, and the 

 matching was not close ; and, after all, is the meadow- 

 brown so very like a dead birch leaf when you come 

 to think of it ? 



More striking was the case of the golden Y moth, 

 the pretty insect which I have found in moist places 

 in the Surrey birch woods, and which flies often by day. 

 I watched one settle on the trunk of a birch tree. It 

 has some dark fluff or fur, standing out like a hump 

 on the back, which reminds me of the dark, rough 

 cork of the birch trunk near the ground. If this were 

 the usual resting-place of golden Y, it would seem 

 very like a matching precaution ; but I have no proof 

 that golden Y moths prefer for sleeping quarters the 

 rough, corky trunk of the birches ; I think my moth 

 settled thereon by chance. I found him first amid the 

 copse grasses and cross-leaved heather, and I found 

 another golden Y moth next day resting off the birch 

 trunk in the under cover of the wood. 



In the lane end of the birch wood I have seen the 

 silver studded blue butterflies sucking the bird's-foot 

 trefoil and the bramble blossoms. The silver studded, 

 with lilac- blue wings and their clear fringe of white, is 

 quite as lovely as the common blue butterfly ; indeed, 

 in minutiae (and perhaps because he is not so common) 



