HOW TO KNOW THE BUTTERFLIES 



allows the markings to show through. It is ever 

 an indolent beauty, and loves to settle on flowers 

 and let its wings droop while it luxuriates in a 

 sun bath. When disturbed, no butterfly of them 

 all has a flight so dignified and haughty as that 

 of the giant swallow-tail ; it scorns to escape the 

 net by a margin of more than three or four 

 inches. 



The caterpillar (Plate VIII) is a most unpre- 

 possessing creature in appearance. At best it is 

 an elongated brown and white blotched object 

 pinched in the middle and looking far more like 

 bird-lime than like a thing of life. However, if 

 disturbed it lifts the head and throws out a pair 

 of longf orange horns which exhale a stench that 

 renders its immediate neighborhood quite unin- 

 habitable by man or bird. The species is three- 

 or four-brooded in the Southern States, and oc- 

 curs there in such numbers as to be most destruc- 

 tive to the citrus fruit trees. In the North it 

 feeds upon wild plants ; so we here may with a 

 clear conscience give ourselves up to the enjoy- 

 ment of this largest and most striking butterfly 

 of our fauna. It was taken in New York first in 

 1864. The first specimen was taken at Ithaca 

 in 1899, and since then a limited number of the 

 butterflies have appeared here each year. 



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