BLACK- VEINED. 59 



recorded as producing it : Herne Bay, and other parts 

 of the Isle of Thanet, plentifully ; near Faversham, 

 Kent ; Horsham, Sussex ; New Forest ; Brington, in 

 Huntingdonshire ; near Cardiff, South Wales, plentiful 



The caterpillars are gregarious, feeding under cover 

 of a silken web. The hawthorn and the sloe are its 

 chief food plants in this country, but it is here too rare 

 an insect to do much damage. Not so, however, on the 

 Continent, where it is extremely common, and is classed 

 among noxious insects, committing great devastation 

 among various fruit trees, especially the apple, pear, 

 and cherry. 



But even in this country the insect is occasionally 

 met with in great profusion, but only in isolated spots. 

 Mr. Drane, writing from Cardiff to the Zoologist, says, 

 4t In the middle of April (1858) I found the larvce feed- 

 ing by thousands upon insulated shrubs of Prunus 

 Spinosa (Common Sloe), eating out the centres of the 

 unexpanded buds, or basking in the sun upon their 

 winter webs." 



The body of the adult caterpillar is thickly clothed 

 with whitish hairs, is leaden grey on the side and un- 

 derneath, black on the back, and marked with two 

 longitudinal reddish stripes. Found from the middle 

 of April to the end of May. 



The chrysalis, shown at fig. 14, Plate I., is greenish 

 white, striped with yellow and spotted with black 



The butterfly appears in June. 



THE LAEGE GAEDEJST WHITE BUTTEEFLY. 

 (Pieris Brassicce.) (Plate IV. fig. 2.) 



WHY this butterfly should so far outnumber every 

 -other native species (excepting, perhaps, the more rural 

 Meadow Brown), is a question beyond our power to 

 answer satisfactorily. Certainly, the food plants of the 



