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in successive broods all through summer ; but I think this is the case in very few species. 

 One might ask why the common white butterfly is so productive, and the orange tip and most 

 other kinds only appear to have a single brood during the year? 



In rainy seasons it is quite evident, I think, the caterpillars cannot feed and grow ; and in 

 such kinds as have only one lot of eggs in the season, if wet at that time the crop of insects 

 for the next season is much diminished, you may say hopelessly ; but should there be repeated 

 broods, as in the common white butterfly, a wet early summer might nearly destroy the first 

 brood; but if a dry late one, the crop might be excessive, from the few perfect insects which 

 escaped during the early wet season, as all the eggs laid by them might produce perfect insects. 



I should think in tropical countries, where they have wet seasons periodically, at such times 

 most of the insects will be either in the egg or chrysalis state, and that the perfect insect's life 

 will be of very short duration, not extending over the dry season; the rain, when it does 

 come, often being so excessive in quantity, and lasting for such a length of time, that the 

 caterpillars or perfect insects would be washed away, but it may not be so, as perhaps the 

 foliage on the trees may be so luxuriant as to afford shelter in some nooks and corners for them. 



Perhaps some writers, without giving sufficient consideration to the subject, often suggest as 

 a certainty that if birds were more strictly protected, we would be relieved from any anxiety 

 as to depredations committed by insects, from their becoming what we consider, at particular 

 and uncertain times, too numerous. 



Now I cannot help thinking such letters and opinions only mislead, and though they perhaps 

 tend to prevent cruelty to our feathered friends, they rather also lead their readers to expect 



