overlapping scales, after the manner of shingles on a roof. 
These scales possess the color of the wings, just as do the 
feathers on a bird or the hairs of a dog or horse. When we 
catch the moth or butterfly, we often find our fingers covered 
with a mealy substance or dust, which is nothing but a lot of 
these scales rubbed from the wings. In the butterfly, more¬ 
over, we have a third- style of insect month. You will remember 
in the house-fly that it was a lapping proboscis; in the bee 
there were chewing mouth-parts moving laterally. We see 
in the butterfly a very strange sort of mouth. It looks like 
a black watch-spring which is concealed by two bunches of 
hairs projecting from the head. If you put a pin through the 
center of the coil, you can draw the mouth out and observe its 
length. In some of the larger butterflies it is an inch or two 
inches in length. As the food of butterflies is the nectar of 
flowers and must be obtained from the base of long, slender, 
tubular flowers, a long, slender proboscis is provided. 
Through this the liquid nectar is drawn up, and speedily the 
mouth is coiled away as the butterfly again resumes its flight. 
The cabbage butterfly—the subject of our present study — 
is regarded as the most common of all butterflies, although 
it has only been a resident of this country for a few years. 
It is said to have been imported from Europe —uninten¬ 
tionally, of course — about the year 1857, and now has ex¬ 
tended over about the entire area of the United States and 
Canada. It is regarded as the most injurious to agriculture 
of all our butterflies. From early spring to late fall — that 
is, from the first of April until the last qf October — we 
may see this butterfly in country or city. I have witnessed 
it out on the ocean fully a mile from land, and have wondered 
where it would rest from flight. 
Children wage desperate war against these “white wings,” 
pursuing them across meadows, through parks, and about 
the streets. Perhaps the first real chase experienced by the 
young child is in pursuit of these ever-moving white butter¬ 
flies. It might seem to some of our readers that the life of 
the butterfly in its mature or imago stage is quite long, on 
account of its continuous appearance during the summer. 
The fact is, however, that the individual does not live much 
more than three weeks, at which time it is succeeded by the 
members of another brood. 
2 
