BUTTERFLIES

THISTLE BUTTERFLIES, ANGLE WINGS, AND SULPHURS

Monograph Number Six in The Mentor Reading Course

Winged flowers, or flying gems.—Moore.

Painted Lady and Thistle Butterfly are prettier names than Pyrameis cardui for the familiar speckled, brown creature with a roseate tinge shown at the top of the plate. Found wherever the thistle grows, it is therefore one of the most widely distributed of all butterflies (as the thistle is one of the most widely distributed of all plants), fluttering over the purple blooms in the temperate regions of both hemispheres and in many tropical lands as well. It is hard to distinguish the Painted Lady from Hunter’s butterfly on the left. If, however, we should look on the under side of the hind wings, we should find that the Hunter’s butterfly has two large eyelike spots there, and the Painted Lady numerous and smaller eyelike spots. The two specimens are male.

Another common butterfly belongs to the Angle Wings, whose characteristics are deeply cut fore wings, the under side mimicking the bark of trees and dead leaves. The under side of the rover shown here visiting a dandelion is mottled brown with a pale purple hue. A silvery mark, like a semicolon or an interrogation, on the hind wings gives Grapta interrogationis its curious name. This is a common butterfly in the United States. Happy flocks are frequently found at the pans and buckets in a sugar camp, joyfully drinking the sap which drips from the wounded maples.