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HARD WICKE ' S S CIE NCR - G SSI P. 



very remarkable and striking aberration, coquettishly 

 tricked out by a broad black band on the fore wing, 

 not a little suggestive of the crape bandage worn by 

 officials on their uniform to indicate mourning. To 

 a certain class of collectors, I know such a feature 

 will doubtless convey no idea, present no meaning. 

 Light and airy things like butterflies, they will say, 

 are ever prone to vary, as human faces are, or as the 

 fluttering leaves of a tree when compared are never 

 found perfectly alike. Yet had one of these empirics 

 of nature left the infatuations of units and number, 

 for an afternoon's stroll among the natural wood on 

 the broading of the Surrey Downs ; when during 

 the past autumn the late and perhaps only annual 

 brood of |tortoiseshells were floating about the stem- 



the latter sort from their nettles on the Downs arul 

 reared them, I found I obtained a certain percentage 

 of the butterflies with indications of black bands. 

 On the other hand, the caterpillars with lines I did 

 not notice at all on the elevated land during the past 

 year, but my friend Mr. Kidd sent me some he had 

 discovered in the valley around Godalming. 



Although the billowy crests of the Downs, where 

 at Newland's Corner their motionless undulations 

 look over to the towers of Sydenham, do not rise 

 much in the excess of some 500 feet ; yet analogy 

 with what we know of variation on the slopes of the 

 Alps and Pyrenees, would serve to raise a strong 

 presentiment in mind that even here we have the 

 all subtle influences of altitude at work ; and if so, 



Fig. 88.— I. Aberration of the small tortoiseshell butterfly (Vanessa urtica^) reared on 

 willow, with a band of black irrorations joining the second black spot on the costa 

 to the blotch on the inner margin ; 2. Diagram of caterpillar from which it was bred ; 

 3. Diagram of the more ordinary form of the caterpillar of Urticse, with yellowish 

 lines ; 4. Dwarf of the large tortoiseshell (Vanessa polychloros) obtained from diet- 

 ing the caterpillars on willow. The example has additional spots on the fore wing, 

 and is shown with the light shining through it, when four bands may be faintly 

 traced crossing the surface. 



less thistles and clover heads ; — had he there and 

 then marked the prevalence of a certain shade blur- 

 ring on their wing ; in some individuals but faint, and 

 resembling a faded ink-stain, in others pricking out 

 in a rash of black points, a well-defined band pro- 

 ceeding from the second of the spots on the costa to 

 the corresponding dark blotch on the inner margin ; 

 — he would certainly have marvelled at the repeated 

 embodiment of a natural phenomenon which seemed 

 to visibly evoke law out of apparent lawlessness. 



What renders the matter yet more interesting is 

 the fact of there existing in the same district two 

 distinct forms of caterpillar that produce this butter- 

 fly, the one (3) enhanced by four conspicuous longi- 

 tudinal yellowish lines, and the other (2) dark with 

 no yellow lines ; and when I brought home some of 



in these and similar cases we must turn our eyes to 

 high latitudes for corroboration of the assumption. 

 Now Dr. Standinger, when recapitulating his captures 

 on his return from Finmarken in the extreme north 

 of the Scandinavian peninsula (Stettin, Ent. Zeit. 

 1861, p. 345), tells us, that individuals of Urticse 

 appear among the herbaceous willows and dwart 

 birches of that hyperborean locality'about May 29th, 

 and that during July the nests of young caterpillars 

 are found, which reproduce the butterfly towards the 

 middle of August ; and he then adds :] Of this 

 single annual brood, the examples are generally 

 somewhat darker than the German, and the black 

 spot on the inner margin is notably connected more 

 or less with the middle costal spot by means of black 

 atoms. 



