54 LEPIDOPTERA. 



chirping noise when dry, but by what means 5s net clearly 

 understood. 



This species is said by various writers to occur, in the per- 

 fect state, in August, in this country. Dr. Lang states that it 

 is double-brooded in the southern area of its distribution ; and 

 it may, under exceptional circumstances, become so here ; 

 but all the evidence obtainable points to its single-brooded- 

 uess with us. All the lar\a3 — a considerable number — which 

 I found upon Gcninta tindoria in Surrey in June and July 

 produced the perfect butterflies in the following spring, with 

 one exception, in which case emergence took place — not in 

 August — but in ilay of the succeeding year. 



It is a very lively little butterfly, fond of settling upon 

 bushes and the lower outside leaves of trees, where these are at 

 hand, but flitting round them and backward and forward 

 with great swiftness in the sunshine. Open woody places 

 are favourite resorts, but it is found, not seldom, on boggy 

 heaths, where Genista aiiglica is the only available food plant. 

 One of my earliest recollections, when a very little boy, is of 

 such a heath in Devon, where cotton-grass {Eriophorum 

 anytistifulmrii) grevv in profusion, and where, among it, these 

 charming green butterflies, then quite new to me, were 

 flitting about in plenty. Very different, indeed, was the 

 spot on which I met with them a few years ago — high up on 

 one of the hills of Cannock Chase — where they were evidently 

 quite at home on the extensive patches of whortleberry 

 {Vaccinum myrtilJiis), a circumstance which was not ex- 

 plained until Mr. Fletcher's discovery of the larva on the 

 allied cowberry. 



Very widely disti-ibuted ; found in almost every suitable 

 locality in England, often plentifully ; not scarce in Wales ; 

 occurring almost all over Scotland with the exception of the 

 Orkney and Shetland Isles ; but much less generally dis- 

 tributed in Ireland, where it is found in the Dublin and 

 Wicklow districts, in Gal way and other parts of the west, 

 being especially abundant in Kerry. 



