BRITISH BUTTERFLIES 



captured, but directly the sun appears again they are 

 quickly on the alert. The caterpillar, which is a flabby 

 and sluggish sort of creature, is greenish in colour and 

 is marked with black and yellow ; it feeds upon clover 

 and bird's-foot trefoil. The cocoon is most conspicuous, 

 fixed as it usually is about half-way up a grass stem. It 

 is a shuttle-shaped affair, more or less white as regards 

 colour, and of a glistening, papery texture. If one of 

 these cocoons is opened a shining black chrysalis will 

 be found within, or it may happen that the maker 

 of the domicile will then be exposed still in its cater- 

 pillar state. 



The female moth lays eggs of a yellowish colour in 

 batches, and in large numbers. The caterpillars hiber- 

 nate and many doubtless perish or fall victims to some 

 foe. Those that survive until the spring are then 

 subject to the attacks of parasitical flies, and the num- 

 bers destroyed in this way is sometimes, in hot seasons 

 especially, very large. Even when the chrysalis state 

 is attained without mishap, all danger is not over, as the 

 contents of these cocoons appear to be to the taste of 

 sundry birds, and even mice seem to have cultivated a 

 liking for them. It is perhaps surprising that they 

 escape complete annihilation. They come near such 

 a catastrophe in some years. 



Two nearly allied, but rather local, kinds of Burnet 

 Moth have only five crimson spots on the forewings. 



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