William S. Coleman
British Butterflies
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066452827
Table of Contents
CHAPTER IV. How to catch a Butterfly
CHAPTER V. How to kill a Butterfly.
CHAPTER VI. The British Butterflies Separately Described.
PREFACE.
A desire to extend the knowledge of, and by so doing to extend the love for, those sunny creatures called Butterflies, has prompted the author to undertake this little work, which, though making no pretence to a technically scientific character, will, it is hoped, be found sufficiently complete and accurate to supply all information needful to the young entomologist as to the names, appearance, habits, localities, &c. of all our British Butterflies, together with a general history of butterfly life—the mode of capture, preservation, and arrangement in cabinets—the apparatus required, &c. At the same time it is so inexpensive as to be accessible to every schoolboy.
The subject is one which has formed the delight and study of the author from early boyhood, and butterfly-hunting still preserves its fascinations, redoubling the pleasure of the country ramble in summer.
Should this volume be the means of inciting some to seek this source of healthful enjoyment, and to join in the peaceful study which may be so easily pursued by all dwellers in the country, it will have succeeded in its purpose.
The whole of the illustrative portraits of the butterflies have been drawn from nature by the author, and with one exception from specimens in his own collection. At least one figure of each species (of the natural size) is given; but in very many instances, where the sexes differ considerably from each other, both are figured, and the under sides are also frequently added.
The greater number of the caterpillars and chrysalides, however, being rarely met with, the figures on the first plate are nearly all borrowed from the splendid and accurate works of Continental authors—chiefly from Hübner and Duponchel.
With great pleasure, the author here acknowledges his obligations, for many biographical facts relating to butterflies, to those highly useful periodicals, the Zoologist and the Entomologist's Weekly Intelligencer, the former devoted to general natural history, the latter especially to entomology, and whose pages register a mass of interesting and original communications from correspondents who, living in wide-spread localities, and possessing varied opportunities of observation, have gradually brought together, under able editorship, a store of facts that could never have come within the personal experience of any one man, however industrious and observant.
The capture during the past year of a new and interesting butterfly for the first time in this country, is recorded in this volume, in which the insect is also figured and described.
Bayswater, April 1860.
CHAPTER I. Introduction
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
WHAT IS A BUTTERFLY—BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS—BUTTERFLY LIFE—THE EGG STAGE—SCULPTURED CRADLES—BUTTERFLY BOTANY—THE CATERPILLAR STAGE—FEEDING UP—COAT CHANGING—FORMS OF CATERPILLARS—THE CHRYSALIS—MEANING OF PUPA, CHRYSALIS, AND AURELIA—FORMS OF CHRYSALIDES—DIFFICULTIES OF TRANSFORMATION—INFLUENCE OF TEMPERATURE.
Occasionally a missive arrives from some benevolent friend, announcing the capture of a "splendid butterfly," which, imprisoned under a tumbler, awaits one's acceptance as an addition to the cabinet. However, on going to claim the proffered prize, the expected "butterfly" turns out to be some bright-coloured moth (a Tiger moth being the favourite victim of the misnomer), and one's entomological propriety suffers a shock; not so much feeling the loss of the specimen, as concern for the benighted state of an otherwise intelligent friend's mind with regard to insect nomenclature.
It is clearly therefore not so superfluous as it might at first otherwise seem, to commence the subject by defining even such a familiar object as a butterfly, and more especially distinguishing it with certainty from a moth, the only other creature with which it can well be confounded.
The usual notion of a butterfly is of a gay fluttering thing, whose broad painted wings are covered with a mealy stuff that comes off with handling. This is all very well for a general idea, but the characters that form it are common to some other insects besides butterflies. Moths and hawk-moths have mealy wings, and are often gaily coloured too; whilst, on the other hand, some butterflies are as dusky and plain as possible. Thus the crimson-winged Tiger, and Cinnabar moths get the name of butterflies, and the Meadow brown butterfly is as sure to be called a moth. So, as neither colouring nor mealy wings furnish us with the required definition, we must find some concise combination of characters that will answer the purpose. Butterflies, then, are insects with mealy wings, and whose horns (called "antennæ") have a clubbed or thickened tip, giving them more or less resemblance to a drum-stick. So the difference in the shape of the antennæ is the chief outward mark of distinction between butterflies and moths, the latter having antennæ of various shapes, threadlike or featherlike, but never clubbed at the tip.
Having thus settled how a butterfly is to be recognized at sight, let us see what butterfly life is: how the creature lives, and has lived, in the stages preceding its present airy form.
In like manner with other insects, all butterflies commence their existence enclosed in minute eggs; and these eggs, as if shadowing forth the beauty yet undeveloped whose germ they contain, are themselves such curiously beautiful objects, that they must not be passed over without admiring notice. It seems, indeed, as if nature determined that the ornamental character of the butterfly should commence with its earliest stage; form, and not colour, being employed in its decoration, sculpture being here made the forerunner of painting.
Some of these forms are roughly shown on Plate II. (figs. 1-7), but highly magnified; for as these