6o AUTUMN AND WINTER 



of the male brimstone or his moonlight-coloured mate. 

 They are too restless to haunt gardens like the Vanessae, 

 which love to return over and over again to the same perch. 

 Clouded yellows are usually seen in rapid though dancing 

 flight across open meadows, or the wide vetch and clover 

 fields that skirt the downs. It is this restless habit which 

 scatters them far and wide across the country by September, 

 when there has been a migration from France in May or 

 June. 



Common blue butterflies are still plentiful at the beginning 

 of September, but become scarcer as the month advances, 

 and have vanished by the end. They too are field rather 

 than garden butterflies ; but when drought parches the 

 meadows, they visit gardens for the sake of the moisture of 

 the watered lawns and beds. But they are not happy in a 

 small area, and after coursing to and fro for some time, 

 vanish again into the dry land outside. With them comes 

 the small copper, which is commonest in dry heathy fields, 

 but wanders far and wide. It has all the spiritedness which is 

 associated with red colouring in many different forms of life ; 

 a small copper will always be sparring in the air with the 

 blue butterflies that haunt the same field, or with others of 

 its kind. Small coppers are often abroad very late in the 

 season. After a fine summer they are often seen on bright 

 October days, and sometimes linger into November. In 

 damp summers they produce two broods, but in warm seasons 

 three or even four ; and it is these latest broods which haunt 

 the autumn pastures and woodsides among the last of the 

 thistle-down and the faded seed-heads of the knapweed. 

 In hot seasons the last brood of caterpillars pupate and 

 emerge as butterflies instead of hibernating ; then the butter- 

 flies lay eggs, and the young caterpillars hatched from them 

 hibernate instead of their parents. 



