On the blue heads of the pasture scabious (scabiosa succisa) we occasionally see, toward the end of the summer, the painted lady butterfly (papilio cardui); but this is a creature that visits us at very uncertain periods, and is vivified by causes infinitely beyond the comprehension of the entomologist, seeming to require a succession and variety of seasons and their change, and then springing into life we know not how. This was particularly obvious in the summer of 1815, and the two following, which were almost unceasingly cold and rainy; scarcely a moth or butterfly appeared. And in the early part of 1818, the season was not less ungenial; a few half-animated creatures alone struggled into being; 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 cutting a canal in this county; and, in the ensuing summer, 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 intervals of ten or twelve years when none could be found, and in some following seasons it would be a prevailing species. The common wasp (vespa vulgaris) is infinitely uncertain in its numbers. A mild winter, and a dry spring or summer, we might conclude to be favorable circumstances 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 (coccinella septem punctata), was so obvious, as to be remarked by very indifferent persons.