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 
larve. 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. 
