Butterflies in the Garden 207 



flies all feed on stinging-nettles, while those of the 

 painted lady live on the thistle. The commonest 

 food-plant of the brimstone caterpillar, the wild 

 buckthorn of waste places and hedgerows, is a 

 shrub with whose welfare the gardener is scarcely 

 more closely concerned. All these butterflies are 

 rather the allies of the gardener than his foes, and 

 co-operate with him, for the most part, in the 

 suppression of his enemies the weeds. The only 

 kinds of butterfly against which the gardener has 

 just cause of complaint (about moths, indeed, 

 there is often a different story) are the large and 

 small whites, which, in spite of their specific dis- 

 tinctness, are united, during the larval stage, in a 

 taste for cabbages and other green things of the 

 gardener's care. It is the widespread cultivation 

 of cruciferous plants by man which has multiplied 

 the " common white " to its present state of 

 abundance. It is a rare insect even now in mountain 

 and moorland tracts far from the humblest kailyard, 

 and must always have been scarce so long as it 

 was dependent for its living on the wild sea-cabbage, 

 and perhaps a few other related plants of the 

 cruciferous order. 



The white butterfly is as thorough a parasite 

 of humanity as the sparrow ; though it can do less 

 harm, it does all the harm that it can. Yet the 

 damage done by both species of cabbage butterfly 

 is almost trivial compared to the ravages of the 

 far more offensive caterpillar of the cabbage moth. 

 It is the moth and not the butterfly which is 

 the parent of the mottled smoky-grey caterpillars 



