umnal appearing species) live
through all the winter hid up in hollow trees, outhouses, etc.
appearing at the first rays of the spring sun to lay their eggs and
die. Others pass through the frost and snow as pupae, bursting their
cerements in the sunshine, to live their brief life and perpetuate
their race; others eke out a half dormant existence as minute larvae,
others pass the winter in the egg state. In fact, each species has its
idiosyncrasy. [Footnote: Here, perhaps, I may explode that myth and
"enormous gooseberry" of the mild winter or early spring, headed in
the newspaper every year as "Extraordinary Mildness of the Season":
"We are credibly informed that, owing to the mildness of the past
week, Mr. William Smith, of Dulltown, Blankshire, captured a splendid
specimen of a butterfly, which a scientific gentleman to whom it was
sent pronounced to be the small tortoiseshell Vanessa, etc." Now the
fact is, that Urticae merely came out for an airing, awakened from its
winter sleep by the extraordinary warmth of the day, and it might just
as likely have been "shook up" on the preceding Guy Faux or
Christmas-day; all the Vanessidae, and many others, being hybernators.
Far different, however, is it when any of the "Whites"--Pieridae--are
seen or caught. They indeed do herald the coming spring, as, lying in
the chrysalis state throughout the autumn and following winter, some
degree of continuous warmth must take place 'ere they can emerge.]

The swallow-tail butterfly, first on some British lists, must be
sought for in the fens of Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire, and
Northamptonshire. It is a strong flyer, and requires running down,
unless when settled on the head of one of the various umbelliferous
plants it delights in. The clouded yellow is usually a lover of the
sea-coast during the months of August and September--though in that
year of strange climatic changes (1877) it appeared in considerable
numbers from the beginning of June, whether hybernated, or an early
brood evolved from pupae lying dormant throughout the last summer, is
an open question.

The Purple Emperor, now one of our rarest insects (I have not seen it
alive since the time when I was a boy, and saw it around the oaks of
Darenth Wood), was formerly captured by the aid of a net fixed to a
pole 30 ft. or 40 ft. long. But accident or science discovered,
however, that this wearer of Imperial purple possessed a very degraded
taste, descending, in fact, from