ORANGE-TIP AND BRIMSTONE 



It is a bold, strong flier, and wherever garlic and hedge 

 mustard, cuckoo flower (cardamine), and other cruci- 

 ferous plants are found, one may expect to come across 

 it, these being the more usual food-plants. I almost 

 always enter the first Orange-Tip in my Nature Diary 

 by the end of the first week of May, and it is a great joy 

 to see this little herald of the Summer again on the wing. 

 Search may be made for the prominently fluted eggs in 

 June, but it must be a careful one, or they will assuredly 

 be overlooked. The larva eventually becomes bluish- 

 green, and is adorned with blackish and whitish hairs 

 proceeding from warts and dots respectively. A white 

 line runs along the sides. The protective resemblance is 

 very marked, and although the tapering pupa remains in 

 position for several months, it is curious to notice how 

 often it is overlooked. It is green at first, but becomes 

 lighter colour later. The female imago has black tips 

 at the edges of the fore wings instead of orange, but the 

 greenish-yellow mottling on the under surface of the 

 hindwings is equally beautiful in both sexes. In dull 

 weather one may frequently come across one of these 

 insects resting on a wayside flower, or in the garden 

 w-aiting for the advent of the sun. 



Brimstone. — {Gonepieryx rhamni.) Passing by the 

 Wood White and the Clouded Yellow, both of which 

 are, as a rule, scarce insects, brings us to the Brimstone 

 Butterfly (Fig. 3) which, in the region of the Chalky 

 Chilterns where the author resides, is very plentiful. 

 The reason for this is that the favourite food-plant of 

 this species is the buckthorn, which delights to dwell in a 



calcareous soil. This is the last member of the Family 



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