Although more than fifty distinct species belonging to this tribe have
been found in North America, very few of these are distributed through
the eastern part. Only four are so abundant and widely distributed
that they need be treated of here.
=Baltimore Checker-spot=
_Euphydryas phaeton_
To the naturalist those islands in the seas which are remote from the
mainland have long been of especial interest. The life upon them is
likely to show the results of many generations of living under unique
conditions. The plants and animals are generally distinctive, many of
the species having characteristics which differentiate them markedly
from those upon the mainland. They show in a thousand ways the effect
of isolation and so are of especial value when one attempts to
determine the results of unusual conditions upon living things.
In a somewhat similar way the peat bogs or sphagnum swamps which occur
here and there over a large part of North America are of especial
interest, because in a way they are biological islands in which the
conditions of a long past age are preserved until the present. These
nearly always occur in a little valley surrounded on all sides by
hills. Here the water has collected originally into a pond or lake,
which has been gradually filling up through the growth of peat mosses
and a special set of other plants that develop in such situations. One
can still find many stages in the process. In some bogs the surface
will be practically covered, although the water beneath may still be
so abundant that the matted moss quakes as one walks over it.
Sometimes such bogs are really dangerous because the walker may drop
through to the water beneath. In most of the bogs, however, the little
lake is nearly filled but shows the surface over a small area.
The conditions in these peat bogs have changed little since
civilization began. They are relics of an earlier era which have come
down to us as types of conditions that once existed very generally.
The plant life is unique and consists almost entirely of forms which
are found practically nowhere else. There are comparatively few
animals living in these peat bogs and all of these are likely to be of
especial interest. Among the insects none is more remarkable than the
Baltimore Checker-spot butterfly which has several peculiarities that
differentiate it from the other members of the group. It seems to have
come down to us unchanged from a far remote past and to be living its
tranquil life to-day in precisely the same manner as during the time
when the mammoth and the mastodon were likely to invade its haunts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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