Pl. 69.
Glanville Fritillary.
Eggs, natural size and enlarged; caterpillar and chrysalis.
The chrysalis is stout and not elongated, largest in the middle of the abdomen; where it is transversely ridged; elsewhere it is smooth and rounded, with no striking prominences, but with little conical projections at most of the elevated points, like those which half encircle the body at the abdominal ridge, all of a golden colour except the latter, which are situated in a tri-coloured band, black in front, nacreous in the middle, and gilt behind (Scudder).
According to Dr. Holland, "the butterfly is considered to be polygoneutic, that is to say, many broods are produced annually; and it is believed by writers, that with the advent of cold weather these butterflies migrate to the South [in America], the chrysalids and caterpillars which may be undeveloped at the time of the frosts are destroyed, and that when these insects reappear, as they do every summer in North America, they represent a wave of immigration coming northward from the warmer regions of the Gulf States. It is not believed that any of them hibernate in any stage of their existence. This insect sometimes appears in great swarms on the eastern and southern coasts of New Jersey in late autumn. The swarms pressing southward are arrested by the ocean." Within quite recent years it seems to have effected a settlement in Australia, "and has thence spread northward and westward, until in its migrations it has reached Java and Sumatra, and long ago took possession of the Philippines. Moving eastward on the lines of travel, it has established a more or less precarious foothold for itself in Southern England.... It is well established at the Cape Verde Islands, and in a short time we may expect to hear of it as having taken possession of the continent of Africa, in which the family of plants upon which the caterpillars feed is well represented."
So far as is shown by the published records, the actual number of specimens of the Milkweed, or, as it is sometimes called, Monarch butterfly, seen or caught in England between 1876, in which year it was first observed in this country, and the present time, does not much exceed thirty, and about one-third of these were obtained in September, 1885. In 1876 single specimens were captured at Neath, S. Wales; Hayward's Heath and Keymer, Sussex; and Poole, Dorset. In 1896 single specimens were reported as seen at Lymington, Hants, in May; Newlands Corner, Surrey, in July; and the Lizard, Cornwall, in September. The years in which the butterfly has been noticed in Britain are 1876, 1881, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1887, 1890, and 1896. It was first observed on the Continent in 1877, when, according to Barrett, a specimen was taken in La Vendée, France. In 1886, when half a dozen were recorded from England, single specimens were obtained in Guernsey, and at Oporto and Gibraltar. "More recently," Barrett states, "Mr. H.W. Vivian found it, I believe not uncommonly, in the Canaries, and very kindly brought me a specimen."