:

"To catch the queens in the spring is to my mind a waste of
time, and I discontinued paying for their capture, as the
number visible in the spring appeared to bear no relation to
the resulting summer nests. In the first place, the number
of queens in spring is always greatly in excess of the
numbers of nests, and to attempt to catch all the queens is
a hopeless job. As a rule, I don't think one per cent, ever
gets as far as a nest unless the weather conditions are very
favourable. Heavy rain, when the broods begin, may easily
wipe out 99 per cent., and only those on a dry bank will
survive. To pay a halfpenny per queen may be equivalent to
the payment of four and twopence per nest!"

Referring to the payment of school-children for the destruction of
white butterflies he writes:

"The white butterfly is extraordinarily prolific, and to
catch a few in the garden is a complete waste of time.
Again, weather conditions are largely responsible for the
occurrence of a bad attack, and the only possible time to
reduce the plague is in the caterpillar stage, with
hellebore powder, or one of the proprietary remedies,
applied to the young plants. Scientists recommend the
catching of queen wasps, and also butterflies, but I regard
this as a case where science is not strictly practical."

There is, of course, the danger, too, that children will not recognize
the difference between the female of the Orange Tip butterfly, which
is practically colourless, and the cabbage whites, and it would be
worse than a crime to destroy so joyous and welcome a creature, whose
advent is one of the pleasantest signs that summer is nigh at hand. I
have watched these fairy sprites dancing along the hedge sides at
Aldington year by year, and in May they were extraordinarily abundant
here, happily coursing round and round my meadow, and chasing each
other in the sunshine. The Orange Tip is quite innocent of designs
upon the homely cabbage, the food-plant of the caterpillar being
_Cardamine pratensis_ (the cuckoo flower), which Shakespeare speaks of
so prettily in the lines:

"When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white."

Possibly Hood was thinking of the Orange Tip when he wrote the lines
that seem so well suited to them:

"These be the pretty genii of the flowers
Daintily fed with honey and p