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Among the butterflies, Melitæa Ismeria, in the south, and M. Harrisii, in the north, are sometimes seen. A second brood of Colias Philodice, the common sulphur-yellow butterfly, appears, and Pieris oleracea visits turnip-patches. It lays its eggs in June on the leaves, and the full-grown, dark-green, hairy larva may be found in August.
But what did the caterpillar eat before our cabbages supplied him with copious provender? Obviously the Pieris did not wait for the advent of man and his horticultural works in order to take part in the joys of life. She lived without us and would have continued to live without us. A Butterfly's existence is not subject to ours, but rightfully independent of our aid.
This alternation, without being of an irreproachable precision, gives a fairly stable equilibrium to the whole. To see the mother at her laying is no easy matter: when examined too closely, the Pieris decamps at once. The structure of the work, however, reveals the order of the operations pretty clearly.
Its stomach, burned by pungent spices, will find the Crucifera insipid and uneatable, though its piquancy is enhanced by essence of sulphur. The Pieris, on its part, takes good care not to touch the tithymals: they would endanger its life. The caterpillar of the Death's-head Hawk-moth requires the solanaceous narcotics, principally the potato, and will have nothing else.
The Pieris limits herself to depositing her eggs on the leaves of the cabbage, "on which the young must themselves find food and shelter." "From the height of the topmost clusters of the centaury the Clythris negligently lets her eggs fall to the ground, one by one, here or there at hazard; without the least care as to their installation.
This insect botany, a cause of such grievous tribulations, has always impressed the worker in the fields, who for all that, is a very indifferent observer. The man who was the first to see his cabbage-plot devastated by caterpillars made the acquaintance of the Pieris.
No matter: his aphorism, the mere whimsical sally of an epicure, becomes an imperious truth if we forget the luxury of the table and look into what is eaten by the little world which swarms around us. To each its mess. The cabbage Pieris consumes the pungent leaves of the Cruciferae as the food of her infancy; the Silkworm disdains any foliage other than that of the mulberry-tree.
Here I noticed one of the smallest and most elegant tree ferns I had ever seen, the stem being scarcely thicker than my thumb, yet reaching a height of fifteen or twenty feet. I also caught a new butterfly of the genus Pieris, and a magnificent female specimen of Papilio gambrisius, of which I had hitherto only found the males, which are smaller and very different in colour.
But the Pieris, which haunts the cabbage, frequents the nasturtium also, and the golden rose-beetle, which "intoxicates itself at the clusters of the hawthorn," is no less addicted to the nectar of the rose.
This egg-parasite passes its early life in the eggs of Pieris brassicæ, and two or three live to reach the imago state, though about six eggs are deposited by the female. The eggs are oval, and not stalked. The larva is at first of the form indicated by figure 197 E, and when fully grown becomes of a broad oval form, the body not being divided into segments.
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