﻿226 THE ENTOMOLOaiST. 



has been my habit to turn the surplus population of my butterfly- 

 house loose on the countryside, and I gather from letters which 

 I have received and from notices which have appeared from time 

 to time in the * Field ' and other newspapers, that some of the 

 insects which I have set at large have been observed or captured 

 by students of nature in this country.* In view, however, of the 

 large number of specimens which I have released, amounting in 

 the ease of Laertiasphilenor, a North American pharmacophagous 

 Papilio, to several hundreds each season, I have been surprised 

 rather by the want of notice occasioned than by the reverse. It 

 has struck me as remarkable that insects so conspicuous as 

 Papilio Manor and Laertias philenor can be flying in considerable 

 numbers for weeks at a time in this neighbourhood without 

 attracting more attention. Perhaps some of the native butter- 

 flies which are believed to be extremely rare are not really so 

 uncommon as we imagine, the more so as they are far from 

 being as striking to the untrained eye as the species I mention. 



It has been suggested that some of the exotic species of 

 Papilionidae which I have liberated might succeed in establishing 

 themselves permanently in this country. This I believe to be 

 unlikely on account of the fixed habit of double-broodedness of 

 some, and the limited distribution of the food-plants of the 

 others. And since my experiments, though fruitless in their 

 main object, have given me a certain intimacy with the life- 

 habits of the species concerned, I append some notes on the 

 subject, laying stress on the points at which my own observations 

 of the last few years supplement, or are at variance with, the 

 information given in the usual text-books, including the life- 

 histories which I worked out for the late Mr, Tutt, to which he 

 refers in his * Natural History of the British Butiterflies,' vol. iii. 

 part xviii., and the notes which at various times I supplied to 

 the ' Entomologists' Record ' when it was under his editorship. 



The species which I have bred, or attempted to breed, in the 

 semi-captivity of my butterfly-house, are the Nearctic Papilionids : 

 Laertias philenor, Heraclides cresphontes, Euphocades troilus, 

 Jasoniades glaums, Papilio polyxenes (asterias), P. zolicaon, Iphi- 

 clides ajax {turnus) ; and the Palaearctic : Papilio alcinous, P. 

 bianor, P. xuthus, P. hippocrates, and Iphiclides podalirius. I 

 will now deal with these seriatim : — 



(1) Laertiasphilenor. — This beautiful and interesting butter- 

 fly, a near relative of the so-called Ornithoptera, is an inhabitant 

 of the greater part of the United States. In spite of the fact 

 that it is a southern species which has spread northwards, and 

 that its congeners, with the exception of one species in Mexico, 

 are denizens of the forests of tropical America, it exhibits great 

 climatic adaptability. In the southern portion of the United 

 States it is said to produce several broods in the year, and in 



* Cp. Mr. Hugh Scott, antea, p. 212. 



