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A DISSERTATION ON NORTHERN BUTTERFLIES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2012

William Couper
Affiliation:
Montreal.

Extract

The meeting with Papilio turnus on the Island of Anticosti, astonished me, as I did not expect to find this butterfly so far north in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Only two specimens were taken during the season. and old settlers say that it is ahvays rare. Anticosti is evidently its most northerly limit, as it does not occur on the opposite shore of Labrador. It is common at Halifax, N. S., and in many localities along the south side of the St. Lawrence, until we reach the lake and rocky regions on the heighth of land from which the Assomption river flows north of Montreal.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Entomological Society of Canada 1874

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References

* Note.—Mr. Scudder gives the following food plants ol P. turnus: Apole, wild-thorn, choke cherry, cultivated cherry, alder, tulip, bass-wood, oak, black ash and birch. The former eight do not grow on Anticosti, but the latter two may Mr. Saunders found them feeding on cherry—“Can. Ent., vol, i, p. 74.”

* Note.—See Can. Ent., vol, v, p. 9.

Note.—To my subscribers I distributed an equal share of what I supposed were two species of Colias, taken last year on Anticosti, and one of each was sent to Mr. Grote, who did not include them in his article on the butterflies of that island.

Note.—Its habits are similar to Colias edusa, of Europe, which has a lively flight. Mr. Coleman says that “his pursuer has need of the seven league boots, “with the hand of Mercury, to insure success in the fair open race, if that can be “called a race at all, between a heavy biped struggling and perspiring about a “slippery hill-side, such as edusa loves, and a winged spirit, of air, to whom up-hill “and down-hill seems all one.”

* Note.—W. S. Coleman, in his remarks on the brilliant metallic spots which adorn the chrysalides of butterflies, says: “This golden effect is produced by a “brilliant white membrane underlying the transparent yellow outer skin of the “chrysalis (Cynthia cardui), and it may be imitated, as discovered by Lister many “years ago, by putting a small piece of black gall in a strong decoction of nettles; “this produces a scum which, when left on cap-paper, will exquisitely gild it, without “the application of the real metal.”

Late experiments made by a French Entomologist on caterpillars of a Bombyx, were as follows: “It was ascertained that silk worms fed on vine leaves yielded silk “of a red color; when they had lettuce alone they gave cocoons of an emerald green; “nettle leaves produced violet silk, and it was also found that numerous combinations “of colors were the result of a varied diet of mixed leaves, fed during the last 20 “days of the larva period. Yellow, red, green and violet seem to be the colors most “successfully produced.”

* Note,—Coleman, in his “British Butterflies,” remarks on the variety Gonopteryx cleopatra, of Europe, that M. Boisduval has proved. that G. rhamni and the former are identical, and in a foot note adds that “they are two varieties, but “why they fly together he cannot explain; but it is possible there may be a con-“stitutional difference between individual insects, just as we see that of two English-“men going to a hot climate—one will brown deeply, while the complexion of the “other will hardly alter, although exposed to the very same external influence.” In another portion of Coleman's book he thinks it possible that Colias edusa var, helice may be a male between C. edusa an C. hyale.