BRITISH BUTTERFLIES 



food-plants of the caterpillars which they support, 

 has naturally had a great effect upon the increase and 

 diminution of particular species. With the gradual 

 drainage of the fen countries, the Large Copper has 

 become wholly extinct, and the Swallowtail is now very 

 rare and local ; on the other hand, the Large and Com- 

 mon Whites undoubtedly owe their commonness at 

 the present day to the universal cultivation of the cab-* 

 bages and other garden plants on which the caterpillars 

 feed. Before such green garden-stuff was universally 

 grown in England, these Whites must have been among 

 the scarcer English butterflies. Even to-day, on such 

 a remote fringe of British civilization as some of the 

 outer Hebrides, it is strange to see how the Common 

 White is a scarce insect haunting the few island gardens, 

 while the desolate peat-moors are covered with the 

 rare Large Heath, a butterfly of the waste and morass 

 which is scarcely seen in England, and only in certain 

 narrow and desolate areas. The disappearance of the 

 British Large Copper is all the more to be regretted 

 since it formed a distinct island species which had 

 acquired, in ages of separate life, marked differences 

 from the kindred butterfly of the Continent, which is 

 still anything but rare. The British race of the Camber- 

 well Beauty, the magnificent cousin of the Peacocks 

 and Red Admirals, which also seems to have become 

 extinct within the memory of men of middle age, had 



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