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
The caterpillar when full grown is tawny brown with paler hairs
arising from white warts; the stripes along the sides and back are
black. The under parts are greyish. The head, legs, and spiracles are
blackish. Caterpillars hatch from the egg in August, and then live
together in a common habitation which is formed of silk and whitish in
colour. They come out in the morning and again in the evening to feed,
but a few leaves are generally enclosed in their tenement. In October
they seem to retire for the winter and reappear in the spring. During
May they become full grown and then enter the chrysalis state. The
butterflies are on the wing at the end of June and in July.
[Illustration: _Pl._ 4.
=Black-veined White Butterfly.=
1, 2 _male_; 3, 4 _female_.]
[Illustration: _Pl._ 5.
=Large White Butterfly.=
_Eggs, natural size and enlarged; caterpillar and chrysalids._]
The chrysalis is creamy white, sometimes tinged with greenish, and
dotted with black.
This butterfly was mentioned as English by Merret in 1667, and by Ray in
1710. Albin in 1731, who wrote of it as the White Butterfly with black
veins, figures the caterpillar and the chrysalis, and states that
caterpillars found by him in April turned to chrysalids early in May and
to butterflies in June. Moses Harris in 1775 gave a more extended
account of the butterfly's life-history, and what he then wrote seems to
tally almost exactly with what is known of its habits to-day. This
species has seemingly always been somewhat uncertain in its appearance
in England. Authors from Haworth (1803) to Stephens (1827) mention
Chelsea, Coombe Wood in Surrey, and Muswell Hill in Middlesex, among
other localities for the butterfly. It has also been recorded at one
time or another, between 1844 and 1872, from many of the Midland and
Southern counties. In 1867 it was found in large numbers, about
mid-summer, in hay fields in Monmouthshire. The latest information
concerning the appearance of the species in South Wales relates to the
year 1893, when several caterpillars and four butterflies were noted on
May 22 in the Newport district. At one time it was not uncommon in the
New Forest, but no captures of the butterfly in Hampshire have been
recorded during the last quarter of a century. At the present time it is
probably most regularly obtained in a Kentish locality, presumably in
the Isle of Thanet, which is only known to a few collectors. It may be
mentioned that some thirty years ago caterpillars of the Black-veined
White could be obtained from a Canterbury dealer at a few shillings per
gross.
The species is widely distributed, and often abundant, on the
Continent, and its range extends through Western and Northern Asia to
Yesso, Northern Japan.
The Large White (_Pieris brassicæ_).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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