BUTTERFLIES—MOTHS—WASPS.
"How like a rainbow, sparkling as a dewdrop,
Glittering as gold, and lively as a swallow,
Each left his grave-shroud and in rapture winged him
Up to the heavens."
—ANON.
I have always been fascinated by the beauty of butterflies and moths, and I think I began collecting when I was about eleven, as I remember having a net when I was at school at Rottingdean. My first exciting capture was a small tortoiseshell, and I was much disappointed when I discovered that it was quite a common insect. In 1917 some nettles here were black with the larvæ of this species, but I think they must have been nearly all visited by the ichneumons, which pierce the skin, laying their eggs in the living body of the larva, as the butterflies were not specially common later. I was, however, fortunate in identifying a specimen of the curious variety figured in Newman's British Butterflies, variety 2, from one in Mr. Bond's collection; it has a dark band crossing the middle of the upper wings, but, though interesting, it is not so handsome as the type. I did not catch this specimen, as I do not like killing butterflies now, but I had ample leisure to observe it quite closely on the haulm of potatoes. It was decidedly smaller than the type.
The old garden at Aldington in the repose of a June evening was a place of fragrant joy from honeysuckle on poles and arches, and just as the light was fading the huge privet hawk-moths, with quivering wings and extended probosces, used to sip the honey from the long blossoms. I could catch them in a net, but these specimens were nearly all damaged from their energetic flight among the flowers, and perfect ones are easy to rear from the larvæ, feeding in autumn on privet in the hedges.
Later in the summer the Ghost Swift appeared about twilight, the white colour of the male making it very conspicuous. Twilight at Aldington is called "owl light," and moths of all kinds are "bob-owlets," from their uneven flight when trying to evade the owls in pursuit. We often see these birds "hawking" at nightfall in my meadows round the edge of the Forest after moths.
The martagon lily flourished in the Aldington garden, and when they were blooming the overpowering scent was particularly attractive to moths of the Plusia genus, including the Burnished Brass, the Golden Y, and the Beautiful Golden Y, all exhibiting very distinctive markings of burnished gold; and other Noctuæ in great variety. The latter are best taken by "sugaring"—painting patches of mixed beer and sugar on a series of tree trunks, and making several rounds at twilight with a lantern and a cyanide bottle. We had a sugaring range of about seventy pollard withies by the brook side, and being well sheltered, it was such a favourite place for moths, that it was often difficult to select from each patch, swarming with sixty or seventy specimens, those really worth taking. At sugaring moths are found in a locality where they are never seen at other times, and rarities occur quite unexpectedly. I took some specimens of Cymatophora ocularis (figure of 80). Newman says: "It is always esteemed a rarity," and mentions Worcester as a locality. Mamestra abjecta was quite a common catch, of which Newman writes:
"It seems to be very local, and so imperfectly known that the recorded habitats must be received with great doubt; it is certainly abundant on the banks of the Thames, near Gravesend, and also on the Irish coast, near Waterford."
The marks of sugaring remain on tree trunks for many years. I lately saw the faint remains on about sixty trees in Set Thorns plantation, in the Forest, which a friend and I painted on nearly forty years ago. This friend was fortunate in capturing the black variety of the White Admiral, in which the white markings are entirely absent on the upper side; and, thirty years later, his son took another near Burley. The son also caught a Camberwell Beauty on one of his sugared patches in the day-time. I believe this to be the only recorded instance of the occurrence of this rare and beautiful insect in the Forest.
The Hornet Clearwing (Sesia Apiformis) is a very interesting moth, and it was common at Aldington; the larva feeds on the wood of the black poplar. The colouring of the moth so resembles the hornet, that at first sight it is easily mistaken for the latter. It is an excellent example of "mimicry," whereby a harmless insect acquires the distinctive appearance of a harmful one, and so secures immunity from the attacks of its natural enemies.
The larva of the Death's Head was not uncommon at Aldington and Badsey on potatoes; I had a standing offer of threepence each for any that the village children could bring me. These large caterpillars require very careful handling, and I fear the children were not gentle enough with them, as I only had one perfect specimen moth from all the larvae they brought.
One of my hop-pickers captured and presented me with a very fine specimen of the Convolvulus Hawk-moth at Aldington; they were generally comparatively common that year (1901) and a collector took no less than seventeen in a few days in the public garden at Bournemouth.
The Clouded Yellow butterfly, whose appearance is very capricious, occurred one summer in Worcestershire in considerable numbers; it is strong on the wing and could easily reach the Midlands in fine weather from the south of England, where it is more often seen. Those I saw were flying high over clover fields, apparently in a hurry to get further north-west.
The Marbled White is a somewhat local butterfly; there was a spot along the Terrace on Cleeve Hill, near North Littleton and Cleeve Prior, where, at the proper time, this insect was plentiful, but I never saw it anywhere else in the neighbourhood.
One of the entomological prizes of the New Forest is the Purple Emperor; it is impossible to do justice to the wonderful sheen of its powerful wings. It inhabits the tops of lofty oaks, but does not disdain to come down for a drink of water, sometimes from a muddy pool, or even to feast on dead vermin which the keepers have destroyed.
The Comma, so called from the C-mark on the under side of the hind wings, is fairly plentiful in Worcestershire and Herefordshire in the hop-districts, for the hop is its food plant; but it is curious that, with the abundance of hops in Kent, Sussex, and Hants, it is quite a rare insect in the south of England. The ragged edge of its hind wings is probably an arrangement to baffle birds in pursuit, offering more difficulty to securing a sure hold than is afforded by the even margin of the hind wings of most butterflies.
In some years wasps were exceedingly troublesome at Aldington, and fruit picking became a hazardous business. One of my men ploughed up a nest in an open field, and was badly stung, though the horses, being further from the nest when turned up, escaped. It is quite necessary to destroy any nests on or near land where fruit is grown, as the insects increase in numbers at a surprising rate, and they travel great distances after food for the grubs. I had an instructive walk over the fruit farm of my son-in-law, Mr. C.S. Martin, of Dunnington Heath, near Alcester, with his cousin, Mr. William Martin, who is extraordinarily clever at locating the nests. He quickly recognizes a line of flight in which numbers of wasps can be seen going backwards and forwards, in a well-defined cross-country track, follows it up and locates the nest a long distance from where he first perceived the line. In this way during our walk he found a dozen or more nests. In the evening, when the inmates were at home, they were treated with a strong solution of cyanide of potassium to destroy the winged insects; and the next day the nests were dug out and the grubs destroyed, which otherwise would become perfect wasps.
Lately it has become a custom to pay a half-penny each for all queen wasps in the spring, but Mr. C.S. Martin, who had many years' experience on the fruit plantations of the Toddington Orchard Company, extending to about 700 acres, as well as on his own plantations at Dunnington, writes to me as follows on the subject:
"To catch the queens in the spring is to my mind a waste of time, and I discontinued paying for their capture, as the number visible in the spring appeared to bear no relation to the resulting summer nests. In the first place, the number of queens in spring is always greatly in excess of the numbers of nests, and to attempt to catch all the queens is a hopeless job. As a rule, I don't think one per cent, ever gets as far as a nest unless the weather conditions are very favourable. Heavy rain, when the broods begin, may easily wipe out 99 per cent., and only those on a dry bank will survive. To pay a halfpenny per queen may be equivalent to the payment of four and twopence per nest!"
Referring to the payment of school-children for the destruction of white butterflies he writes:
"The white butterfly is extraordinarily prolific, and to catch a few in the garden is a complete waste of time. Again, weather conditions are largely responsible for the occurrence of a bad attack, and the only possible time to reduce the plague is in the caterpillar stage, with hellebore powder, or one of the proprietary remedies, applied to the young plants. Scientists recommend the catching of queen wasps, and also butterflies, but I regard this as a case where science is not strictly practical."
There is, of course, the danger, too, that children will not recognize the difference between the female of the Orange Tip butterfly, which is practically colourless, and the cabbage whites, and it would be worse than a crime to destroy so joyous and welcome a creature, whose advent is one of the pleasantest signs that summer is nigh at hand. I have watched these fairy sprites dancing along the hedge sides at Aldington year by year, and in May they were extraordinarily abundant here, happily coursing round and round my meadow, and chasing each other in the sunshine. The Orange Tip is quite innocent of designs upon the homely cabbage, the food-plant of the caterpillar being Cardamine pratensis (the cuckoo flower), which Shakespeare speaks of so prettily in the lines:
"When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white."
Possibly Hood was thinking of the Orange Tip when he wrote the lines that seem so well suited to them:
"These be the pretty genii of the flowers
Daintily fed with honey and pure dew."
A story is told of an undergraduate who united the hind wings of a butterfly to the body and fore wings of one of a different species, and, thinking to puzzle Professor Westwood, then the entomological authority at Oxford, asked if the Professor could tell him "what kind of a bug" it was. "Yes," was the immediate reply—"a humbug!"
One of my schoolfellows, a boy about eleven, at Rottingdean school, and quite a novice at butterfly collecting, met a professional "naturalist" on the Warren at Folkestone, who inquired what he had taken. "Only a few whites," said the boy. The man looked at them and, eventually, they negotiated an exchange, the boy accepting three or four others for an equal number of the whites. On reaching home he found that he had parted with specimens of the rare Bath White, Pieris daplidice, for some quite common butterflies. The Bath White is not recognized as a British species, Newman supposing the specimens taken in this country to have been blown over or migrated from the northern coast of France, as they have been rarely met with away from the shores of Kent and Sussex.
It is surprising to find so many people who seem unable to exercise their powers of observation to the extent of noticing the butterflies they daily pass in the garden, or along the roads. One would expect that the marvellous colouring of even our common butterflies would arrest attention, and that interest in the names and life-history would follow.
In June in the Forest the rather alarming stag-beetle is to be seen on the wing on a warm evening; though really harmless, its size and habit of buzzing round frightens people who are not acquainted with its ways. They are called locally, "pinch-bucks," as their horns resemble the antlers of a buck, and they can nip quite hard by pressing them together. I once saw a fight between a stag-beetle and a toad, it had evidently been proceeding for some time as both combatants were exhausted, but neither had gained any special advantage.