MEADOW BROWN BUTTERFLY. 
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double pupil. The hinder wings are tawny-brown 
from the base to the middle, where the colour ter- 
minates in an angular line : the space beyond this is 
pale, excepting the margin, which is of the same co- 
lour as the base. The pale portion sometimes bears 
two or three small black eye-like spots, and the whole 
surface seems as if dusted with black. 
Both the caterpillar and chrysalis are light green, 
the former with a white line along each side, and 
the latter 6 1 re a 1ft d with brown. It feeds on several 
common grasses, particularly the Smooth-stalked 
Meadow-grass (Poa pratensis). The butterfly is 
first seen on the wing in the beginning of June, and, 
next to the White Cabbage species, may perhaps be 
regarded as the most common insect of its tribe in- 
habiting Britain. “ Amid the tribes of insects,” 
says Mr Kapp, “ particularly influenced by sea- 
sons, there are a few which appear little affected by 
common events : the Brown Meadow Butterfly, so 
well known to every one, I have never missed in 
any year ; and in those damp and cheerless summers 
when even the White Cabbage Butterfly is scarcely 
to be found, this creature may be seen in every tran- 
sient gleam, drying its wings, and tripping from flower 
to flower, with animation and life, nearly the sole 
possessor of the field and its sweets. Dry and ex- 
hausting as the summer may be, yet this dusky but- 
terfly is uninjured by it, and we see it in profusion 
hovering about the sapless foliage. In that arid 
summer of 1826, the abundance of these creatures 
