94 CABBAGE. 
The specimens sent were caterpillars of the Large White Cabbage 
Butterfly, then only about half grown, but very handsomely marked 
with black on the greenish ground. 
There are three kinds of white Cabbage butterflies, the ‘‘ Large 
White,” Pieris brassicae, the ‘Small White,” P. rape, and the ‘‘ Green- 
veined White,” P. napi; but these are so much alike in their habits, 
excepting in the method of egg-laying, that the history of the ‘‘ Large 
White’’ may serve for all. This kind, P. brassice, lays its eggs in 
clusters or groups of from just a few, up, sometimes, to as many as 
fifty or sixty on the leaves,—the eggs of the two other kinds are laid 
separately,—and all are of a somewhat flask-shape, and are fastened 
so as to stand uprightly on one end. 
The caterpillars of the ‘“‘ Large White,’’ when first hatched, are of 
a greenish colour, with large black heads, and some amount of black 
patches and specks. With the successive moults, the caterpillar be- 
comes of a yellower green, still marked with black, and after the fourth 
moult the head becomes pale. When full-grown it is about an inch and 
two-thirds in length, of the common somewhat long cylindrical shape 
figured at p. 23; of a variable ground colour of some shade of bluish 
or yellowish green above, with a yellow central line along the back 
and sides, and greenish yellow below. The body marked with large 
black spots, as well as smaller ones, which are separated along the 
back, but more or less united along the sides, so as sometimes to form 
almost a stripe along the sides; and the head partly black, but with 
the lobes bluish grey, powdered with black spots. 
The attack may occur from early summer until advanced autumn ; 
the latest specimens of the ‘‘ Large White’’ caterpillars which I re- 
ceived last season were forwarded just at the end of September. 
When about to change to chrysalis state, the caterpillars secure 
themselves to some firm object, such as a wall, or beneath the coping, 
or to palings, or amongst boards, by attaching the tail with threads, 
and passing a strong thread round the body, something like a fine 
waistband or belt, and thus secured from falling the caterpillar slips 
off its last skin, and appears, as figured at p. 23, as a chrysalis speckled 
with black on a pale ground, greenish or variable in tint. From this, 
in summer, the butterfly comes out in about a fortnight, but not till 
the following spring from the autumn brood. 
In the case of the ‘“‘ Large White,” the butterfly is fairly well 
distinguishable from the two other kinds by its greater size, being 
about two and a half to three inches across in the spread of the fore 
wings, which have a large black patch at the tip. 
For agricultural purposes, it is the distinctions in appearance of 
the caterpillars that are most needed, and those of the two other 
common kinds mentioned above (the Small” and the ‘“ Green- 
