Uncle Paul had a large gauze net, the mouth of which was attached to a hoop of coarse iron wire fastened to the end of a long stick. That was his butterfly-net, and in his leisure moments he used it for catching butterflies, that he might destroy them before they laid their eggs on the plants in the garden. The more butterflies destroyed, the fewer hundreds of caterpillars a little later. Jules came back with the net, but the chase did not accomplish the desired result, though another butterfly was caught very much like the one they were after.
“We must be content with this,” said Uncle Paul. [[339]]“My butterfly-hunting of the last few days seems to have left us none of the sort I am looking for; so we will not waste any more time.
“The insect I have just caught is known as the cabbage-butterfly. Its wings are white, the forward ones having black tips and two or three spots of the same color in the middle.”
“I see that butterfly everywhere,” declared Emile.
“It is in fact one of the most widely prevalent species. Its caterpillar is greenish, marked with black dots and three longitudinal yellow stripes. It does not spin a cocoon for its metamorphosis. The chrysalis is spotted with yellow and black, and is found near where the caterpillar lived, suspended from a wall or a tree in a very ingenious manner. Before shedding its skin the caterpillar emits its small supply of liquid silk, gluing the end of its tail to the spot it has selected and then spinning a fine band which it passes across its body, fastening the two ends at right and left on the stone or the bark to which it is clinging. These preliminaries concluded, the chrysalis stage is reached, the chrysalis being held firmly in place with its lower end glued to the supporting object and its upper half kept from falling by the silk band.”
“Without any cocoon to protect it?” asked Emile.
“Without any cocoon whatever; hence it is called a naked chrysalis. Many other caterpillars adopt the same method: having only a scanty little drop of [[340]]liquid silk, much too small a quantity for spinning a cocoon, they content themselves, when their metamorphosis approaches, with gluing their tail to some object and supporting themselves further with a narrow band. It is to be noted that butterflies from caterpillars that do not spin cocoons all have very slender antennæ ending abruptly in a rounded protuberance or swelling, and that they fly by day in the brightest sunshine. They are butterflies proper, as distinguished from moths. These latter have the chrysalis enclosed in a cocoon, and their antennæ are sometimes of a feathery appearance, sometimes spindle-shaped, or they may take the form of elongated clubs, or, finally, they may be thread-like, tapering but little toward the end. They fly mostly in the evening twilight, or even in the night. Compare the antennæ of the cabbage-butterfly with those of the silkworm-moth or the leopard-moth and you will see how easy it is to distinguish a butterfly from a moth, a cocoonless from a cocoon-spinning insect.”
European Cabbage Butterfly, natural size
(female above, male below)