BATH WHITE BUTTERFLY.
Always rare in England, though common on the Continent.
Photo by B. H. Bentley] [Sheffield.
GREEN-VEINED WHITE BUTTERFLY.
The cabbage-butterfly referred to on page [715].
"One day about the beginning of January, I found a beautiful shrub with large white leafy bracts and yellow flowers, a species of Mussænda, and saw one of these noble insects hovering over it, but it was too quick for me, and flew away. The next day I went again to the same shrub and succeeded in catching a female, and the day after a fine male. I found it to be as I had expected, a perfectly new and most magnificent species, and one of the most gorgeously coloured butterflies in the world. Fine specimens of the male are more than seven inches across the wings, which are velvety black and fiery orange, the latter colour replacing the green of the allied species. The beauty and brilliancy of this insect are indescribable, and none but a naturalist can understand the intense excitement I experienced when I at length captured it. On taking it out of my net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt much more like fainting than I have done when in apprehension of immediate death. I had a headache the rest of the day, so great was the excitement produced by what will appear to most people a very inadequate cause."
Photo by J. Edwards] [Colesborne.
BLACK-VEINED WHITE BUTTERFLY.