BUTTERFLIES FOR LONDON PARKS.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.") Srn,—The idea of stocking the London parks with butterflies, which forms the subject of an extremely interesting article in the Spectator of March 16th, is undoubtedly one which would appeal most strongly to every lover of Nature. It would be difficult indeed to imagine a more beautiful sight than would be afforded by the spectacle of many thousands of these living jewels disporting themselves among the flowers which adorn our London parks, and it is a treat never to be forgotten to gaze upon the regal loveliness of such as the red admiral as he floats across the pathway with an inimitable grace of motion, or alights for a moment on a blossom of his favourite white valerian or a snowy phlox, the while shivering his gorgeous wings in sheer ecstasy, as if conscious of the splendid contrast they present against the white background. But it seems that there would be many difficulties to obstruct the adoption of such a scheme on anything like the mam- moth scale that your contributor suggests. The butterfly is a fragile creature, and his life is beset with many and great dangers—the swoop of a greedy sparrow, a tattered cap flung at him by some imp of mischief, and a thousand other possibilities which could in a moment sever the slender thread of his existence—not to speak of the count- less dangers which surround him during the earlier stages of his career. I will not weary your readers with yards a statistics to show how small a percentage of each brood of caterpillars may reasonably hope to arrive at maturity, but it must be evident to any careful thinker that in order to produce the "hundreds of thousands" of butterflies of which your contributor dreams, food must be supplied for an infinitely more prodigious number of caterpillars. And then arises the obvious objection,— whence is to be obtained this enormous provision P The caterpillar is a voracious eater, and will consume many times his own weight of leaves in a day, and I fancy it is an open question whether it would cause universal delight if the London County Council were to consider it expedient to plant half the park with the necessary beds of nettles and thistles, for the "warm corner" which your contributor suggests would scarcely suffice to make any appreciable difference in the number of butterflies. Or are we to rob Peter to pay Paul, and obtain the desired quota at the expense of stripping the fine elms and limes of their foliage? The large tortoiseshell, to which your contributor alludes, feeds largely on the leaves of the elms, and I have myself seen, in a wood near Oxford, a splendid tree almost bare owing to the ravages of these larv93, and yet there was no great abundance of the butterflies when I visited the spot later on. Such a scheme—although it may appear most delightful in theory—cannot but fail if put to the test, as the production of butterflies in any large quantities would necessarily involve a terrible destruction of foliage, and unless it were done on an enormous scale the increase would hardly be sufficient to repay the trouble expended. Moreover, we can never hope to see the same profusion of insect life as that which is to be found in the tropics, and for which your contributor sighs, unless we have a similar luxuriance of vegetation. It would seem, then, that the advo. cates of such a scheme must inevitably find themselves impaled on the horns of a dilemma, and there is no doubt that they would live to repent the day that they introduced into the parks large quantities of the beautiful leopard moth—to which reference is also made—for these larva3 live exclusively inside the trunks of trees, and are by no means particular to confine their attentions to rotten wood. But even supposing the scheme to be practicable, and that the dream of the London County Council has become a reality ; another difficulty would assuredly present itself, and they would have to assign a special cordon of police to guard against the wholesale destruction of the lovely insects by small urchins, whose only impulse at the sight of a butterfly is to chase it and crush out its tiny life between their grimy
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