The Life-History of a ButterHy 



on increasing without any check, the vegetation of the 

 world would very soon prove quite inadequate to support 

 the vast army of caterpillars, to say nothing of you and 

 me. 



You may at some time find a dozen or two larvae of 

 some particular species of butterfly or moth, and at the 

 time of collecting them they may seem healthy and 

 all right, but weeks afterwards you may discover that 

 only a very small number will change to chrysalids, the 

 ichneumons having had the rest. If you can catch and 

 induce a female butterfly to give you a batch of eggs 

 in captivity, then you may be sure, providing your 

 treatment of them has been right, that all your brood 

 will arrive at the perfect state. 



The next stage we have to consider we will pass over 

 briefly. The change from the larva to the chrysalis is 

 always a very fascinating performance to watch, not 

 that one could sit and see the whole performance right 

 through from start to finish, the time occupied is too 

 long for that. Generally the process lasts a day or two, 

 but by watching at frequent intervals, where several 

 individuals are engaged at the same operation and each 

 at its own stage of the work, it is not difficult to follow 

 the whole process of the transformation. Try it with 

 the larva of the Large Garden White butterfly, perhaps 

 the commonest, and therefore the easiest to procure ; 

 you will gather plenty of "stung" or " ichneumoned " 

 examples, but still a sufficient number should be clean 

 to serve your purpose. 



We will not enter into all the details of the "spinning- 

 6 



