PLATE 6.
But the caterpillars are very different in appearance. In this species the colour is a soft velvety green, with a faint yellow line down the back. Stretched at full length on the midrib of a cabbage-leaf, it is by no means a conspicuous object, and may be quite easily overlooked; but if you see the leaves riddled with holes, and find excrement lying between them and at the base, don’t cease looking until you find the culprit, sometimes deep in a cabbage, or on the back of the outer leaves.
Other caterpillars besides those of the Large and Small Whites may be present in force, notably those of the Cabbage moth (Mamestra brassicæ), large stout caterpillars varying from green to black; they are far too numerous, so have no compunction about destroying all you find. The caterpillar is apt to lose its colour in preserving, as is the case with all green caterpillars.
Green-Veined White (Pieris napi), [Plate I.], Fig. 5.—Unlike the last two species, this White is more often found in the country than the town, and in my experience it is only a casual visitor to suburban gardens. I have never found the caterpillars there.
To distinguish it from the last species it is only necessary to examine the under side, where both fore- and hind-wings are strongly veined with greyish-black, the female particularly so. On the upper side the veins are distinctly marked, but the line is finer.
In a rather wet meadow where Ladies’ Smock abounds in early June, I have seen this butterfly in profusion, and not at all easy to capture when the sun was high. But when King Sol is sinking in the west, and all decent butterflies have gone to rest, a turn through the same meadow while the light still lingers reveals the Veined Whites all at rest on the flower-heads of the Ladies’ Smocks. It is then quite easy to select a few of the best, and search for varieties, until in the deepening twilight butterflies and flowers became so blended as to present only a whitish blurr to the eye. There are two broods—one out in June, the other in August.
The caterpillar is green, with yellow spots on the sides, and may be found on various plants of the cruciferous order, the cress group in particular. I have found it on the Ladies’ Smock (Cardamine pratense) and on the large-flowered Bitter Cress (Cardamine amara). For your collection always mount at least one of each sex with the under side uppermost. The specimen figured is a female; the male has only one round spot on each fore-wing.
Bath White (Pieris Daplidice), [Plate I.], Fig. 6.—This is the rarest of all our Whites; indeed, it is doubtful if it breeds in this country at all. A few specimens are taken annually on the south-east coast and neighbourhood, and the likelihood is that they are migrants from the Continent.