is its
great season; and it lingers with us till late in autumn.

I remember the pleasure with which, on a chill, stormy day in October, I
watched the sports of a pair who were my sole companions while sketching,
in a remote, rocky nook of the South Welsh coast. Very {74} battered and
weather-worn were the pretty creatures, but still retaining much of the
golden bloom of their summer dress.

The Clouded Yellow has been found hybernating in the chink of an old wall
at the end of February, but I am not aware of its coming out again in the
spring, like the Brimstone.

The ground tint of the wings is an exceedingly rich orange-yellow, or
saffron colour, surrounded by a border of very dark brown, sometimes nearly
black. This border is marked, in the male, with thin yellow _lines_, and in
the female with _paler yellow spots_. There is a beautiful rose tint in the
fringe of the wings and on their front edge. Underneath the wings are paler
yellow, taking a citron hue in some parts, and marked with black and brown;
in the centre of the under wings is a brown-circled silvery spot.

There is a peculiar and constant _variety of the female_, in which all the
yellow portion of the upper surface is replaced by a _greenish white_ tint;
but in every other respect the insect agrees with the common form of
_Edusa_. This interesting variety was formerly ranked as another species,
under the name of _C. Helice_; but it is a curious fact that no
corresponding variety of the male has ever been observed; and last year I
captured a pair together--a white female and common orange male--who were
on those terms of tender intimacy which are generally supposed to betoken
identity of species. {75}

Varieties of the female are also met with, of various intermediate shades
of colour between the white and the ordinary orange.

Yet is it not possible that all these varieties may be mules between _C.
Edusa_ and _C. Hyale_ (the next species), the males of which are often seen
pursuing the lady _Edusas_? but if so, as indeed it would be on any other
hypothesis, it is hard to account for the unvarying character of the male.

This butterfly is also called the Clouded Saffron.

* * * * *

THE CLOUDED SULPHUR, OR PALE CLOUDED YELLOW BUTTERFLY. (_Colias Hyale._)

(Plate III. fig. 4.)

We may, in general, readily distinguish this elegant insect from the last
species--the females of which it rather resembles in its markings