This is the sober brown insect that keeps up a constant fluttering, in sunshine and gloom, over the dry pasture land and barren hill-side; and perhaps it ought to find favour in our eyes, from this very fact of keeping up a cheerful spirit under circumstances the most unfavourable to butterfly enjoyment in general.
The colouring of the _male_, on the upper side, may be described as a _sooty brown_, rather lighter about the eye-spot on the front wing. { 102}
The _female_ is a little smarter in her attire, having an orange-tawny patch on the front wing.
Beneath, both sexes are nearly alike; the general colour of the front wing being fulvous, or orange-brown, with a cool-brown margin. The hind wings are marked with tints of a duller brown, varying much in distinctness in different specimens.
The _caterpillar_ is green, with a white stripe on each side. Feeds on grasses.
The _butterfly_ abounds almost everywhere, from June till the end of August.
THE LARGE HEATH BUTTERFLY. (_Hipparchia Tithonus._)
Though much less abundant than the last, this is another very common species, and met with throughout England and the _south_ of Scotland.
The ground tint above is a _rich rust-colour_, or _orange-brown, bordered with dark-brown_; the base of the wings also slightly clouded with the same; and on each front wing, near the tip, there is a _black eye-spot_, with _two white_ dots. So far, both sexes are similar; but the _male_ has, in addition, a _bar of dark-brown across the centre of the rust-coloured space_, on the upper wing. This sex is that figured on the plate. { 103}
Underneath, there is a pretty arrangement of subdued colouring; that of the front wings nearly resembling the upper side; the lower wings clouded and spotted with russet-brown on a paler brown ground, the _dark rounded brown spots_ having _white_ centres; but there are _no black_ eye-spots on the hind wings.
The _caterpillar_ is greenish-grey, with reddish head and two pale lines on each side and a dark one down the back.
The _butterfly_, a feeble flier and easily captured, appears in July and August; its favourite resorts being heaths, dry fields, and lanes.
It is sometimes called the _Small_ Meadow Brown, and the Gate-keeper.