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at first quite white have now been transmuted into metallic adornments ; a 

 brilliant golden streak divides the brown colour from the green of the wings, 

 commencing on each side of the back of the thorax, and a golden spot is seen 

 on each side of the tip of the tail, these silvery spots decorate the underside 

 of the abdomen, and its prominences are embellished with similar spots and 

 streaks both above and beneath. — " Buckler's Larvse." 



The butterfly emerges from the chrysalis at the end of June, and continues 

 on the wing during July. Mr. Newman, in his " British Butterflies," ob- 

 serves : " In J uly the female is seen hovering over the thickest parts of our 

 tallest copses, wherever the stems of the honeysuckle are imbedded, like 

 petrified snakes, in the upright stems ' of the hazels, and the foliage of that 

 sweet climber which has surmounted the hazel spray, and whose blossoms 

 are gaping wide in the sunshine diffusing their delicious fragrance through 

 the summer breezes. The actions and movements of a female butterfly when 

 engaged in the maternal duty of oviposition, are very different from her ordi- 

 nary gait when sailing over the opening blossoms of the bramble in company 

 with friends, lovers, and kinsfolk. It is evident to the eye of the naturalist 

 that she is now on weighty affairs of business ; there is no time lost, none of 

 those flirtations and love-chases so much admired and so glowingly described 

 by our predecessors in the study of entomology. Her flight is slow, flagging, 

 flapping, and only from leaf to leaf. She selects with unerring discrimination 

 the leaves of the honeysuckle, even when surrounded and apparently half- 

 smothered, with the foliage of the hazel, and lays a single egg on the upper 

 surface of a leaf; she then flutters off to another, then to another, never tir- 

 ing, never hesitating which leaf to choose, but always directed by an unfail- 

 ing instinct to the honeysuckle, and always avoids those leaves on which an 

 egg has been deposited." 



" The little caterpillar comes out of the egg in about fourteen days after it 

 is laid, and toddles to the very tip of the leaf before it begins eating, and then 

 it nibbles away day after day, eating the green part, and leaving only the 

 mid rib sticking out like a bristle, and always after a good meal of leaf it 

 goes to the very point of this bristle, and there rests while its meal digests 

 and while it acquires strength for future attack on the same leaf. Day after 

 day the alternate processes of eating the leaf and resting on the tip of the 

 bristle-like mid rib continue, until three-quarters or more of the leaf has been 

 eaten, and then it knows that its devouring duties for the year are over. We 

 all know that the leaves of the honeysuckle are deciduous, and in the course 

 of nature would fall off before winter ; this, however, would not suit the re- 

 quirements of the juvenile caterpillar, which, having once fallen to the ground 

 with the fallen leaf, would inevitably perish. To prevent this falling is 



