A Premier Naturalist Fired perhaps by a famous story of
Bismarck and his tits, our. Prime Minister has been trying to attract tits to the old Downing Street garden. He tells the tale of the tragedy of the unhatched eggs in the latest number of The Countryman, a country quarterly that reigns once more supreme since the decease of its nearest competitor—in site as in charactes. Mr. Chamberlain tells also of a leopard moth in the same-place. Now some moths are peculiarly fond of London, especially the Vapourer whose spiritual home is Kensington Gardens ; but the urban species, so to call them, are few. London is as fatal to most butterfly pupae as it is to such plants as lichen which is quite absent from the circle of smoke. The enemies of the butterflies are not carbon but parasites which especially flourish (as philosophers might expect) in towns. What seems to be inexplicable in that the parasites should flourish in the absence of their hosts or victims. If you visit the dahlias and autumn flowers, say, in Charing Cross Gardens, you will find (such was my experience) great quantities of hover flies and sham bees which are normally parasitic on genuine bees. Can someone, say in South Kensington, tell us how these deceivers came to flourish in the absence of insects to deceive, and a like problem belongs to Mr. Chamberlain's Downing Street leopard moth ? Where did its caterpillar find a convenient tree for its boring instinct and its first home ?
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