The Butterflies of the British IslesSouth, Richard
Science
The Butterflies of the British Isles
South, Richard
Butterflies -- Great Britain; Butterflies -- Great Britain -- Identification; Lepidoptera -- Great Britain
I have not seen any of the early stages of this butterfly. The
caterpillar, which feeds upon the green seeds in pods of the Leguminosæ,
including the garden pea and the lupine, is figured on Plate 102. It is
described as being green or reddish-brown in colour, with a dark stripe
on the back, double oblique lines on the sides, and a white line below
the yellow spiracles; head black. The chrysalis is of a red or yellowish
colour, and dotted with brown. It has a silken girdle and is said to be
attached to a stem, as shown in the figure, but probably it is more
often fixed up among the withered leaves of the food-plant. Two of the
earliest known British specimens of this butterfly were taken by the
late Mr. Neil McArthur on August 4th and 5th, 1859, on the Downs at
Brighton; the third example was captured by Captain de Latour at
Christchurch, where it was flying about a plant of the everlasting pea
in his garden on August 4th of the same year. Newman has noted that in
that particular year the butterfly was very abundant in the Channel
Islands and on the coast of France. No other specimen seems to have been
observed in England until 1879, in which year one was taken at
Freshwater in the Isle of Wight on August 23rd. In 1880 a specimen was
captured in a garden near Bognor, Sussex, on September 12th. On October
2nd, 1882, one was obtained at West Bournemouth. Three were netted in
1893, one of these in late August, and one in the third week of
September, both in Sussex; the third was taken in Kent (inland) in
September. In 1899 a specimen was found at Winchester on September 1st,
and one at Deal on the 16th of the same month; each of these, curiously,
was sitting on a window. On August 2nd, 1904, one example was taken in a
garden near Truro, Cornwall. In addition to the above, single specimens
have been reported as taken at Brighton, July, 1890, and at Heswell,
Cheshire, in 1886 or 1887.
It will thus be seen that the occurrence of this butterfly in England is
exceedingly infrequent. The species is common in Africa and in Southern
Europe; thence it extends eastward through Asia to China and Japan, and
southwards to Australia. It is also found in the Sandwich Islands. It is
believed to be migratory in its habits, and it is supposed that the
occasional specimens that arrive in this country come to us _viâ_ the
west coast of Europe.
In its proper home there is a succession of broods of the butterfly, and
if by chance a few females were to visit this country in the early
summer, they most probably would lay eggs, and the caterpillars
resulting from these would almost certainly be able to feed up and
attain the perfect state here. So far there is no reason to suppose that
the caterpillar has ever occurred in England.
The Short-tailed or Bloxworth Blue (_Cupido argiades_).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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