50 
NATURE NOTES 
trees, belonging to a large landowner I knew well. Presently 
from this wood there appeared a buzzard, which began to dy 
round and round in the open, almost on purpose, it would seem, 
for our especial benefit. He was soon joined by a second, and 
then another and another, till there were five in all. In circle 
after circle did they float, rising higher and higher in the air, as 
we gazed at them till it was time lor us to return home. This 
was a sight never to be effaced from the mind of an ornithologist, 
and one that can hardly, if ever, be seen nowadays in England ; 
no, not any longer, at all events, in the beautiful valley of the 
Usk. Little did I dream of the changes so soon to come upon 
the actors in that day’s scene. My friend has long since passed 
away. The buzzards are gone, aye, and the black-veined 
white butterfly I fear as well. It was some years afterwards, 
and when I had changed my abode, that I came across the 
owner of the wood in which the buzzards lived. I asked about 
them, for I knew he cared for them, as much as I. He told me 
he had done all he could to preserve them, and had given 
particular injunctions on the subject to his keeper ; but that one 
spring they had suddenly disappeared — he supposed from some 
boys having stolen their eggs. At all events he saw them no 
more; and I fancy they retired across the Pristol Channel, 
for at that particular time several of these birds were shot in 
some woods a few miles from Clevedon in Somersetshire, which 
I knew well. 
The black-veined white has become very rare, and is seldom 
taken nowadays. In last August number of Natukh Notes 
I find Mr. W. F. Kirby tells us that “many species of insects 
are much reduced in numbers by the operation of the Wild 
Birds Protection Act, for most of the birds which fall under 
its operation are more or less exclusively insect eaters, and 1 
think it probable that the disappearance of the black-veined 
white butterfly from Britain is due chiefly to this cause.” With 
this conclusion I humbly venture to disagree. May it not 
rather be owing to creatures far smaller and more deadly than 
any migratory bird getting the upper hand, creatures which we 
know are enemies of many British butterflies, and especially 
of the kinds so closely allied to P. Cralirgi — of the common 
white butterflies, and the pretty little orange-tip as well ? W ho 
has not seen, and perhaps ignorantly destroyed, the silky 
golden-looking pupa,’ cases of an ichneumon fly {Microgaiter 
glovierattts), lying in clusters here and there in odd places in 
our gardens, in a crevice of the wall, or above the wood-work 
of the garden door ? d'hese, to the number of sixty or .seventy, 
have lived on a single caterpillar of the white butterfly (P. 
brassicec) that commits so much havoc amongst our cabbages. 
.Should the caterpillar escape the microgaster and safely become 
a pupa there is another enemy in store for it before it becomes 
a perfect insect ; for an eciually small ichneumon fly {I’tcromalus 
brassicec) lays its eggs upon the chrysalis, which soon cause 
