How to Know the Butterflies

The Cornell classic that taught America to name what it saw: every eastern butterfly described from life, with its caterpillar, its food-plants, its habits — and how to pronounce its Latin.

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Alice Cary

Satyrodes canthus (Sat-y-ro'des can'thus) PLATE XXXI, FIG. 3, 4 The upper surface of the wings is soft mouse brown on the basal half and paler beyond, considerably so in the female ; front wings with a nearly straight row of four, roundish, black spots in cells M, to Cu₁; hind wings with a curving row of six eye-spots in cells R to Cu; the spot in cell Cu is sometimes very small, and those in cells R. and M, are fre- 1 quently blurred. On the lower surface the ocellate spots are more distinct. Expanse two inches or more.

CATERPILLAR.-Length one and one-fourth inches; body The downy and striped lengthwise with shades of green. head and hind segments of the body are adorned with a pair of red cone-shaped tubercles.

Food-plants. The coarser grasses and sedges.

This delicate-winged fawn-colored butterfly looks much like a pale little sister of the pearly eye. Its velvety brown spots are almost the same in color and arrangement on the wings except that the upper surface of the front wing usually shows four spots instead of three, as is ordinarily the case with the pearly eye. In the eyed brown the last large spot on the upper surface of the hind wing has a center of white. On the lower surface the white centers of all the eyespots are much larger in proportion than in the pearly eye, each covering one-third of the diameter of the brown circle; and the band on which the eye-spots are set is yellow instead of lilac.

The eyed brown is a northern species belonging especially to the middle West. It is found in Canada and is not rare in New England. For many years, and also in many books, the species is called eurydice; but Orpheus has evidently found another Eurydice among the butterflies, a daughter of the sunlight instead of the shades, and this one now disports itself under the name of canthus. It is single-brooded, and winters as a partially grown caterpillar. The habits of the family are disregarded by this caterpillar, since it feeds by day; when it rests it arranges itself so that its red "horns" project straight out in front and behind, and are thus directed to the foe at the front or at the rear.

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