PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. I2 i 



for though upon the approach of the blighting frosts one by one 

 " the painted meadow tribes " have succumbed and fallen, the 

 antiopa has scarcely lost a feather from its wing or a buoyant 

 plume from its sunny spirit. 



In the bare woods of November he sails across your path, or 

 challenges your curious zeal as he merges into rock or tree, extin- 

 guished amid his own folded wings. Upon the pungent pile of 

 pomace at the cider -mill he suns himself in questionable content 

 as his wings 



" Expand and shut in silent ecstasy," 



joined by a bibulous, convivial company, not only painted like 

 himself, but dressed in gayer plumage, though all close akin. The 

 Milbert's butterfly is here, also the Atlanta, the Comma, perhaps 

 the White J, and the Progne for this is a family party, in the 

 enjoyment of a seemingly common inherited proclivity. Who has 

 not seen that deep orange -red sylph with jagged, spotted wings, 

 like a bright, lingering leaf in an autumn eddy, circling about 

 one's progress through the denuded woods, tempting one's heed- 

 less foot in the orchard path, or alighting on the fence, head 

 downward, with alert wings out- spread? 



The winnowing process of the cold has left but these few con- 

 spicuous remnants, all members of the same interesting group, the 

 Angle -wings, boreal butterflies, the hardy Alpine species of our 

 Lepidoptera, if I may so speak, for these butterflies are Alpine 

 in a larger sense than mere hardihood. While most of our com- 

 mon kinds are peculiar to our continent, these late survivors of 

 the winter, hibernating in crevices and crannies during the cold- 

 est periods, and taking the slightest hint of genial moderation 

 to lend their animated being to the dormant landscape, are in 

 truth cosmopolitan types; the Painted Lady (and Comma?) is 

 found in northern Europe; the Atlanta is common in Europe, 

 Africa, and the East Indies; while the antiopa, the prominent 

 member of the group, is an almost world -wide denizen at home 

 in arctic snows, omnipresent from Alaska to Brazil, and from 

 Lapland to northern Africa. 



16 



