158 



BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



1859, May 14; 1860, May 24 ; 1866, May 2 ; 

 and 1868, May 16. Dr. White has taken it 

 in Kirkcudbrightshire in June and July, also 

 in Fifeshire and Morayshire ; Mr. Wailes, in 

 his " Northumberland and Durham Cata- 

 logue," observes : " This beautiful butterfly 

 is generally distributed over the two counties, 

 frequenting damp places in fields, lanes, and 

 woods, during May and June, where the prin- 

 cipal food-plant of the caterpillar Cardamine 

 pratensis, of which it devours the seed-vessels 

 occurs. This year, 1857, on the 4th June, 

 in the vicinity of Callaly, I observed its 

 simultaneous occurrence in great numbers 

 throughout that district, when not a single 

 specimen was to be seen the day before." 

 Mr. Wailes adds this curious observation : 

 " The usual expansion of the wings is one inch 

 and eight lines to one inch and eleven lines, 

 but in the year 1832 none exceeded one inch 

 and three lines ; and so marked was the 

 difference all over the country, that many 

 were inclined to consider the specimens as 

 those of a distinct species. The following 

 season there was no departure from the nor- 

 mal size." In Gloucestershire this variation 

 in size has been noticed by Mr. Y. R. Perkins 

 both in male and female. The name does 

 not appear in a list from Lincolnshire, most 

 kindly sent me by the late Thomas Henry 

 Allis very shortly before his last illness : it 

 is the only county list from which it is totally 

 absent ; but if I understand Mr. Jenner Fust's 

 paper on the "Distribution of Lepidoptera in 

 Great Britain," he has an authority for the 

 occurrence of Cardamines in that county. 



55. GREEN CHEQUERED WHITE. The fore 

 wings are blunt, but scarcely rounded at the 

 tip ; the hind margin of all the wings is 

 simple. The colour is white, the fore wings 

 having a broad blotch of smoky- black at 

 the tip, and in this are four squarish white 

 spots ; there is a double transverse and rather 

 oblique smoky-black spot above the middle 

 of the costal margin, descending nearly to 

 the middle of the wing, and a smaller round 

 black spot near the anal angle : the hind 

 wings are somewhat clouded with sm<>ky- 



black, more particularly a transverse band 

 parallel with the hind margin, anu there 

 are usually four or five arrow-heads still 

 nearer the hind margin, which, by their 

 stems, are united to this band. On the under 



55. Gieen Cheque! ed White (Piens Daplidice\. 

 Upper side of Male and Female. 



Under side of Female. 



side all the markings of the upper side are 

 not qnly present on the fore wings, but dis- 

 tinctly defined, and are of a yellowish green 

 colour, minutely sprinkled with black : the 

 hind wing.s are beautifully tesselated with 

 greenish markings, as represented in the 

 lowest figure of the three. 



LIFE HISTORY. The EGG is laid on the two 

 species of wild mignonette (Reseda lutea and 

 /'. liiieola) in April or May, ana again in 

 August or September, there being two broods 



