HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



2ZV 



dusk. The white wings of the little clouded silver 

 (Corycia punctata) impress the pupils of my eyes, and 

 I am arrived at a solitary recess open to the blue 

 vault above. There are apparently no bee-flies this 

 year, but in the quiet, a clear winged moth poises 

 at a blossom. I miss my sweep with the net. Then 

 a paradisiacal weariness seizes on me. The glare of 

 the sunlight and perpetual churr of the fern owl 

 becomes tedious, the sound of the wind grows irk- 

 some, the honeyed fragrance of the rich mould is 

 over-satiating. Now then for a love poem in the 

 manner of Petrarch, but it is surely the dinner hour : 

 time forbids. 



As I return over the short turf I catch the note 

 of a grasshopper, a sound I have somewhat missed 

 these eight years past. The little skipper butterfly 

 (Famphila comma), the catch of this district, which 

 I suspect to be double brooded, is not to be seen 



butterflies, Picris Brassiccc, Rapa: and Napi ? I mush 

 have a thought about their ancestry before I throw 

 them away as useless. Is it not a little singular, that 

 the large and small whites of the cabbage beds 

 should be so much alike, and the rustic green-vein 

 so radically different in appearance ; when the fact 

 is, in the caterpillar state the two smaller whites are 

 the most alike ? Indeed they are so much alike, that 

 the only part of Professor Zeller's late discrimination 

 of them in the " Stettin Zeitung " I can verify, is that 

 the caterpillar of the green-vein wants the orange 

 in its dorsal line, and it has no orange spots on and 

 behind its spiracles, like the caterpillar of the small 

 cabbage white. Even here, the rule (I think) is not 

 without exception. As to variation in the perfect 

 state, our white butterflies vary similarly and accord- 

 ing to the season. We have white or buff spring, 

 forms (a, b), in which the black markings are small. 



Fig. 128.— White Butterflies. Limits of seasonal variation :—a, Pun's Rapa <jf, Spring form (dwarfed) ; b, Pieris Rapte 9, Spring 

 form (dwarfed) ; c, Pieris Rapa 9. Summer form ; d, Pieris Napi § , Summer form ; /3 y, spots running into lines. 



darting up the slope. I regain the hedgerow, where 

 I see a purple emperor on an oak spray, and catch 

 three different kinds of white butterfly, one a green- 

 vein (Pieris Napi), taken just in the act of oviposit- 

 ing on a tuft of wild mignonette (Reseda luted). Now 

 I am back in my study — my manufactory, may I say ? 

 From the fritillary, Euphrosyne, and Megcera, the wall 

 butterfly, I elicit quite a joyous fiddling by rubbing 

 the two wings together, and I am led to perceive it 

 arises from the anal vein of the fore wing being 

 notched ; I likewise prick a scent fan from the hind 

 tibiae of the male of the scorched carpet moth (Ligdia 

 adustata). Surely insect physiology should consist 

 in something more than a dry discussion of the 

 organs of respiration ; one would think that we field 

 naturalists were all coming out as surgeons to Queen 

 Titania. 



But now, how about these very common white 



and in the males sometimes absent (a), and we have 

 dusky summer forms, with large black markings 

 (c, d) that often run more or less into a marginal 

 line. This lineament of summer, in the green-vein; 

 (d) we found ovipositing on the wild mignonette, 

 cuts through the black rays and marks a row of 

 obsolete hearts, such as are frequent in its kindred, 

 the white butterflies of Hindustan. In seeking for 

 the most permanent characters of a species, I should 

 mention that size is a very inconstant one : (a) and 

 (/') are, for example, dwarfs I manufactured by starv- 

 ing the caterpillars of last autumn, and I have many- 

 such starvation dwarfs, whites, peacocks, and tortoise- 

 shells, in my boxes ; besides brobdignagian tiger moths 

 from a diet of spring lettuce. A strange food plant 

 too dwarfs a species : my tiger moths (Arctia caja) 

 bred on herb-robert (Geranium Robertianum) are 

 little pallid creatures ; and climate has the same- 



