Volume 10, Plate XXIV / Entomology (Insects)

Meadow-Brown Butterfly, Mountain Ringlet & Ringlet Butterfly

Hipparchia Janira, H. Cassiope & Hyparchia Hyperanthus

1. & 2. Meadow-Brown Butterfly. Larger than the speckled wood, the female sometimes near two inches, it is brown, the male nearly plain but the female with a broad ochre fore-wing patch enclosing a white-pupilled eye. Its light green caterpillar feeds on meadow-grasses; next to the white cabbage species perhaps our commonest butterfly, it flies from early June and persists through the driest, most cheerless summers.
3. Mountain Ringlet. Much smaller than the meadow-brown, spanning about sixteen lines, it is dark brown with a silky gloss, the fore wings bearing a red band marked with three to five black spots. Readily known by its small size, it is very local in Britain, almost confined to the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and common on the Swiss and south French heights.
4. The Ringlet Butterfly. Uniform brown above, generally without eyes but sometimes showing two or three faint ones, it has a paler under side bearing two or three eyes on the fore wings and usually five on the hind pair. Its greyish-white caterpillar feeds chiefly on annual meadow-grass; this sombre but not inelegant butterfly is abundant throughout Britain, haunting meadows, open woods, and corn-field borders.