iwrii.ioxiD.E. 15 



carrot {IhmrnA mroln) and fuuuel {Fmniculwm vvJi/arc), on 

 which it also feeds well in confinement. 



Pupa stout, with blunt projections in front and on the 

 thorax, varying in colour from green to drab, usually fastened 

 to a stem of, or near, its food plant. June, July, and August ; 

 sometimes remaining over to another year or even longer. 



The LARVA feeds in bright sunshine. Usually its singular 

 thoracic tentacle is invisible, but slight pressure at each side 

 will cause it to be protruded, when immediately a strong 

 scent like that of pine-apple is given off. Probably it is also 

 extruded upon sudden alarm, since the Fenmen always assert 

 that they know by the scent when a large specimen of the 

 larva has fallen among the mown herbage, and that this assists 

 them to find it. 



Mr. Farren states that the imago often smells strongly of 

 the umbelliferous food of the larva. 



This grand insect — our only existing species of a genus 

 of magnificent butterflies found almost all over the world 

 — is still common in the undrained fens of Norfolk and 

 Cambridgeshire, and as the latter fens are extremely profitable 

 to their owners, and the former are practically undrainable 

 from their character as narrow strips edging the rivers, there 

 is little probability of its extermination. It is said also to 

 have had once a small station in Sussex, near Pulborough, 

 and certainly it at one time inhabited marshy spots in the 

 Thames valley, since the larva was taken year after year in 

 osier beds in Battersea Fields, though the perfect insect does 

 not seem to have been noticed there. Formerly, before those 

 fens were drained, it was abundant at Whittlesea Mere, 

 Yaxley, and Bui well, and doubtless, at a still earlier period, 

 all over the fens of the Bedford level, as well as in Essex 

 and Suflblk. It has been taken casually in the New Forest, 

 in Somerset, and elsewhere, but not as a settled inhabitant. 

 Larvi^ even have been found in Kent, but only casually. 



Although so striking an insect, its appearance on the wing 

 is somewhat disappointing, as it has the Happing habit of its 



