Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 May 2012
When I decided on an Entomological tour during the past summer to the Island of Anticosti and the coast of Labrador, I fully expected to bring home sufficient material, not only to satisfy the few subscribers to the enterprise, but (after supplying them) enough to remunerate myself for the risk of the voyage and loss of time. Your readers are already acquainted with my misfortune ; still, I hope that the lost species will be replaced, as it is my intention to go over the ground again (if God spares me) next summer. Entomologically speaking, the region is totally new.
* I have noticed this curious connection with Pieris Rapae, which have extremely yellow males, occuring here in the fall. On my return from the North, I captured near this city, last September, a yellow male in coitu with a white female. I sent the former to Mr. Morrison, of Boston who states that it is “the var. Novanglia Sudd., and that it is not uncommon in the spring around Boston.” I am of opinion that white and sulphur yellow varieties of rapae may be found constantly wherever they occur. The food plants of rapae are cabbage, mignonette, nasturtium, and various cruciferae, therefore it may be that the American specimens exhibited by Mr. Scudder in Europe, where what the late Mr. Walsh termed phytophagie. There is no doubt, in my mind, that the food of caterpillers produces the varieties which lead to so much confusion in the determination of butterflies. My friend, Mr. F. B. Caufield, of this city, informs me that he has reared caterpillars of rapae, found of mignonette, which produced imagoes of a deep sulphur yellow.