THE IOUNG NATURALIST 



59 



ARE BUTTERFLIES DISAPPEARING FROM 

 THE BRITISH ISLES? 



By JOHN E. ROBSON. 



Most of entomologists commence by collecting lepidoptera, and all 

 beginners give their first attention to the Butterflies. Not only are they few 

 in number, and many of them attractive in appearance, but they fly by day, 

 and thus are more easily found by the inexperienced collector, who has not 

 learned the various modes of capturing insects after dark. Besides this, 

 they are first on the list, and when the young lepidopterist begins to arrange 

 his collection, he of necessity commences with the butterflies, no matter what 

 arrangement he may select for the sequence of the other groups. He quickly 

 obtains all that are of general distribution. Those abundant locally are 

 soon got in exchange, but the rarities can only be got by purchase, or at very 

 uncertain intervals. By this time he has gained a little knowledge of the 

 other groups, and his attention becomes diverted from the butterflies, just at 

 the time when he has acquired sufficient experience to have enabled him to 

 make discoveries if there were any to make, or at all events to make 

 observations worth recording. If he remains merely a general collector there 

 is enough to do among other groups, and the little that might be done among 

 the butterflies is neglected. If he becomes really an entomologist, it is still 

 one of the larger groups, perhaps the Tinea or Tortrices that attract his special 

 attention, or he may take up a smaller section, the Pugs or the Plumes, and 

 endeavour to work out something new. Larva figuring or describing, pupa 

 digging or some less restricted range of labour may absorb his energies, but 

 whatever it is he does not return to his first love, the butterflies. Pew indeed 

 have reared half, nay quarter of them from their earlier stages. Pew are 

 acquainted with the larva of so common an insect as the Meadow Brown or 

 any of the Satyridce, Lyccenidce or Hesperidtf, and it is a fact that less is known 

 generally about the life history of our butterflies than of any other group. In 

 conducting the Young Naturalist for the past five years, I have naturally 

 been brought into communication with a large number of beginners, and the 

 constant enquiries about butterflies led me first to know how ignorant I was 

 about them, and next to give more attention to them than I had done 

 previously. Among other points the rarity and irregular occurrence of 

 certain species were the subject of many enquiries, and I have been led to 

 conclusions regarding some of them that are not generally received. If these 

 conclusions be correct, they point to a time not very far distant, when a 

 large proportion of our butterflies will have ceased to exist as natives, and 



