148 Life and Immortality. 



a dozen being found upon a single rail. The caterpillars 

 even climbed up the sides of the houses and suspended them- 

 selves from the window-ledges and the edges of the over- 

 hanging shingles. When the butterflies emerged, great 

 blotches of the fluid bespattered the fences and houses as 

 though the clouds had rained great drops of blood. The 

 willows and poplars were alive with the caterpillars, and even 

 the maples were overrun when there came a scarcity of the 

 leaves of the natural food-plants. Green caterpillar-hunters 

 were everywhere plentiful, and the writer could have taken 

 hundreds of specimens, but these highly-useful beetles made 

 a very sorry attempt in holding the enemy in check. 



Two broods of the caterpillars are raised, one in June and 

 the other in August, but the agencies by nature employed 

 for their destruction so effectually accomplish their mission 

 that hardly a season brings to my notice a dozen full-grown 

 larvae. Vanessa antiopa, as this species is called by the 

 scientific student, or Mourning-Cloak by people and ama- 

 teurs, is generally found through the whole of North Amer- 

 ica. In England, where it is popularly called the Camber- 

 well Beauty, because specimens were first taken near Cam- 

 berwell, it is the rarest of butterflies ; while on the Continent, 

 as in this country, it is a very plentiful insect. 



