You can easily recognise this butterfly by its size; and you can tell the female from the male by the two black spots and the narrow black streak upon her front wings. The caterpillar is green in colour, shaded on each side with yellow, and is dotted all over with tiny black spots, from each of which springs a hair. When it has reached its full size it leaves its food-plant, fastens itself to a wall, or a fence, or a door-post, or the trunk of a tree, and turns into a rather stout bluish-white chrysalis, sprinkled with blackish spots. The butterfly may be seen in May, and again in August.
PLATE XVI
THE SMALL WHITE (3 and 4)
This butterfly is even commoner than the last. Indeed, two butterflies out of every three which you see on a warm summer’s day are almost sure to be Small Whites, and they are always very plentiful indeed in gardens, where their caterpillars often do a great deal of mischief. You can easily tell them from the caterpillars of the “large white,” for they are pale green in colour, with a yellow line running down the middle of the back, and a dotted line of the same colour on either side. And instead of having short, stiff hairs all over their bodies, they are covered with a kind of very soft down. They, too, feed upon cabbages and cauliflowers, but instead of eating away the outer leaves only, like those of the “large white,” they bore their way right into the very heart of the plants, and often quite spoil them for use as human food. Very often, too, you may find them feeding on the leaves of nasturtiums, and also on those of mignonette.
This butterfly, like the last, appears in the early spring, and again in summer, and you can tell the female from the male by the two black spots upon her front wings. The chrysalis is sometimes green in colour, and sometimes yellow, and sometimes light or reddish-brown.
1. Large White2. Large White Caterpillar
3. Small White 4. Small White Caterpillar
5. Green-veined White, under-side