THE WASP AND BUTTERFLY. 
199 
a few half-animated creatures alone struggled into be- 
ing; yet this “ painted lady” was fostered into life, and 
became the commonest butterfly of the year : it has, 
however, but very partially visited us since that period. 
The keenest entomologist, perhaps, would not much 
lament the absence of this beauty, if such cheerless 
seasons were always requisite to bring it to perfection. 
Some years ago a quantity of earth was raised in cut- 
ting a canal in this county ; and, in the ensuing sum- 
mer, on the herbage that sprang up from this new soil 
on the bank, this butterfly was found in abundance, 
where it had not been observed for many years before. 
The marble butterfly (papilio galathea) is an equally 
capricious visitant of our fields. I have known in- 
tervals of ten or twelve years when none could be 
found, and in some following seasons it would be a pre- 
vailing species. 
The common wasp (vespa vulgaris) is infinitely un- 
certain in its numbers. A mild winter, and a dry spring 
or summer, we might conclude to be favorable circum- 
stances for the increase of this creature ; yet such is 
not always the case. Years productive of the plum are 
said to be congenial likewise to the wasp. A local 
rhyme will have it, that 
“ When the plum hangs on the tree, 
Then the wasp you ’re sure to see.” 
Amid the tribes of insects so particularly influenced by 
seasons, there are a few which appear little affected by 
common events ; the brown meadow butterfly (papilio 
janira), so well known to every one, I have never missed 
in any year; and in those damp and cheerless summers, 
when even the white cabbage butterfly is scarcely to be 
found, this creature may be seen in every transient 
gleam, drying its wings, and tripping from flower to 
flower with animation and life, nearly the sole possessor 
of the field and its sweets. Dry and exhausting as the 
summer may be, yet this dusky butterfly is uninjured 
by it, and we see it in profusion hovering about the 
sapless foliage. In that arid summer of 1826, the 
abundance of these creatures, and of the lady -bird 
