CHAPTER XIII
THE FRITILLARIES, VANESSAS, AND THE PURPLE EMPEROR
Family—Nymphalidæ
We now come to a rather large family, which contains some of our largest and most brilliant butterflies. Some of them display the most gaudy colours, and others exhibit patches of a beautiful metallic lustre.
If you were to see all the members of this family side by side, they might strike you as being so varied in their appearance that you would wonder why they are all placed in one family group. But, were you to see, in addition to the perfect insects, all their larvæ and chrysalides, the reason would be made clear at once, for these earlier stages are seen to resemble each other in certain points at the very first glance. The former are all provided with peculiar spines, and the latter are all more or less angular, and are all suspended to a silken carpet by means of hooks at the tip of the abdomen, and have no belt as we have observed in the case of the Pieridæ.
The perfect insects, too, although so varied in colouring, are alike in that they have only four walking legs, the first pair being so imperfectly developed as to be useless for this purpose.
This family includes the Fritillaries and the Vanessas.
The Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary (Argynnis Selene)
The interesting group of butterflies known as the Fritillaries vary considerably in size, but are remarkably uniform in the ground colour of the wings, which, in all cases, is a rich golden or sienna brown; and this ground is chequered with darker colours in such a manner as to remind one of the petals of the wild flower