RUMICIA PHL.EAS. 407 



from the July imagines were fullgrown, and the third brood began to 

 emerge during the last week of August, and was well out early in 

 September, in fact, except for a slight lull at the beginning of August, 

 specimens were to be seen throughout the summer, every day visiting 

 the flowers in gardens, fighting in pairs in the streets, often being carried 

 away on the wind, but chiefly congregating in favoured rough corners and 

 lanes, and the banks of the railway, where the tarly morning sun seems 

 especially to have drawn them out into full flight before 9 a.m." This 

 was pretty generally the case all over the southern parts of the British 

 Islands in this year, and, in October, 1893, another almost full emergence 

 took place, the specimens appearing, indeed, well on into November. The 

 dry, hot spring and summer of 1893 were evidently distinctly favourable 

 to the development of phlaeas. Newman notes the species as excessively 

 abundant at the end of September, 1868, and observes that he never 

 saw so many specimens together as on September 30th, at Elm Hall, 

 Wanstead ; a bed of verbenas seemed a great attraction to them. We 

 have already noted Scudder's remarks (antea, pp. 346-7) on the resting- 

 postures of this butterfly, and its sleeping-habits, as recounted by Miss 

 Soule (op. cit.). On the same subject, Smallman writes (in litt.) : 

 " Whilst observing the sleeping-habits of P. icarus, in early August, 

 1906, on Wimbledon Common, a few examples of R. jihlaeas were also 

 noticed on the dead heads of Serratida tinctoria, but, although R. phlaeas 

 is distinctly commoner than P. icarus here, I was only able to find two 

 or three specimens asleep, so I assume they do not, as a rule, sleep on 

 the dead heads of S. tinctoria, or on the grass. This butterfly sleeps 

 head downwards, wings closed, the forewings almost completely hidden 

 by hindwings, except the tips ; the antennas held in a line with the body, 

 and at an angle of about 45° with each other. This species had also 

 ceased to fly at 5.40 p.m." Although one of the earliest of the newly- 

 emerging species to be seen on the wing in the spring, it is also, in 

 Britain, the last non-hybernating butterfly to be seen on the approach 

 of winter. 



Habitat. — It is difficult to say what are the chosen haunts of this 

 lovely little insect, yet one may not write "everywhere" against it, for 

 there are many spots where a specimen may never be seen. Dis- 

 tributed as it is, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in both the Old and 

 New Worlds, and from the warmest north temperate regions to far 

 within the Arctic circle, and from the low hot plains of southern 

 Europe and Asia, up the mountains to an elevation of from 8000ft. 

 (in the Basses-Alpes) to 15000ft. (in northeast Kumoa), it yet selects 

 its chosen places in which to live, and as, in America, it is said to prefer 

 dry, sandy or gravelly, barren spots, or the sides of paths in dry 

 pastures or upland highways, frequently invading towns and finding 

 the hottest corners for its gambols, so, in Europe, it selects sandhills 

 and sand-dunes, sloping chalkhills and flowery wayside banks, 

 meadows, wood-ridings, heaths and moorlands, mountain pasturages, 

 and other innumerably different spots. In Britain, it loves our open 

 chalkhills in the southern and eastern counties, the limestone slopes 

 of the western and northern counties, the sandstone of the south- 

 western, etc., e.g., the downs at Hailing (Ovenden), and at Fresh- 

 water (Hawes), the sandhills at Deal (Tutt), and near Findhorn 

 (Mutch), especially abundant on the dry Triassic sandstone area 

 of the central and northern parts of Nottingham (Goss) ; the 



