s are gregarious, feeding under cover of a silken web. The
hawthorn and the sloe are its chief food plants in this country, but it is
here too rare an insect to do much damage. Not so, however, on the
Continent, where it is extremely common, and is classed among noxious
insects, committing great devastation among various fruit trees, especially
the apple, pear, and cherry.

But even in this country the insect is occasionally met with in great
profusion, but only in isolated spots. Mr. Drane, writing from Cardiff to
the _Zoologist_, says, "In the middle of April (1858) I found the _larvae_
feeding by thousands upon insulated shrubs of _Prunus Spinosa_ (Common
Sloe), eating out the centres of the unexpanded buds, or basking in the sun
upon their winter webs."

The body of the adult _caterpillar_ is thickly clothed with whitish hairs,
is leaden grey on the side and underneath, black on the back, and marked
with two longitudinal reddish stripes. Found from the middle of April to
the end of May.

The _chrysalis_, shown at fig. 14, Plate I., is greenish white, striped
with yellow and spotted with black.

The _butterfly_ appears in June.

* * * * *

{80}

THE LARGE GARDEN WHITE BUTTERFLY (_Pieris Brassicae._)

(Plate IV. fig. 2.)

Why this butterfly should so far outnumber every other native species
(excepting, perhaps, the more rural Meadow Brown), is a question beyond our
power to answer satisfactorily. Certainly, the food plants of the
caterpillar--cabbages, cresses, and their tribe--are universally met with;
but then we find there are other insects whose food plant is equally
plentiful and widespread, and yet they are nevertheless very rare or local.

This is pre-eminently the domestic butterfly, abounding in suburban
gardens, and at times penetrating into the smoky heart of London, and then
even the young "St. Giles's bird," whose eyes were never gladdened by green
fields, gets up a butterfly hunt, and, cap (or rag) in hand, feels for the
nonce all the enthusiasm of the chase in pursuit of the white-winged
wanderer, who looks sadly lost and out of place in the flowerless,
brick-and-mortar wilderness.

This and the next species are the only British butterflies who can be
charged with committing any appreciable amount of damage to human food and
property. In the winged state, indeed, it is utterly harmless (like all
other butterflies); but not so the hungry caterpillar progeny, as