ci a i 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
VoL. x.— MARCH, 1876. — No. $, 
A COLONY OF BUTTERFLIES. 
BY AUG. R. GROTE. 
ABOUT one hundred thousand years ago, during the decline 
of the ice period, a colony of butterflies settled in New En- 
gland. They chose for their territory Mount Washington, in 
New Hampshire, and their descendants occupy the rocky summit 
of that mountain to this day. Mount Washington is 6293 feet 
high, and the White Mountain butterflies are not found below 
an elevation of about 5600 feet. Between this height and the 
cloud-capped summit, the butterflies disport during the month of 
July of every year. The bare and inhospitable summit affords lit- 
tle vegetation, but the White Mountain butterflies find there food 
upon which they thrive. Both Mr. Sanborn and Mr. Scudder 
have found the caterpillar feeding upon the sedges which grow, 
as best they may, in hollows and between the rocks. The brown 
butterfly which succeeds the caterpillar measures about one and 
eight tenths inches from tip to tip of the extended fore wings. 
Above, the Wings are feebly marked ; beneath, the hind wings are 
crossed by a dark median band with its outer edges deeper brown 
and irregular, while beyond the band the wings are marbled, 
brown and white. Naturalists know the White Mountain bnt- 
terfly by the name of Oeneis semidea, and its first biographer 
„was Thomas Say, who described it in the year 1828. Previously, 
Mr. Thomas Nuttall, the botanist, had collected specimens of the 
butterfly » while Say’s original figure of the species was drawn 
from an individual presented to him by Mr. Charles Pickering, 
of Salem. ` 
It is 1800 miles west from Mount Washington to Long’s Peak, 
Colorado, In this direction, over all the level stretch of country, 
no butterflies like our White Mountain butterfly are to be met 
With, But in Colorado, species similar to the White Mountain 
butterfly, if not exactly like it, are found again occupying ele- 
“Pen nae all eR ee 
Copyright, A. S. PACKARD, JR. 1876. 
