Butterfly Hosts The other day I saw (for the first
time) a considerable number ofthe caterpillars of the swallowtail butterfly feeding on their proper plant. This glorious butterfly has increased greatly of late years. Last summer it swarmed on Hickling Broad, and it has been numerous this year. That greater rarity, the Great Copper, reintroduced of recent years, has main- tained itself, but is threatened by the extinction of its host plants. The too efficient draining of adjacent areas has tended to dry up the marshes in which alone its dock flourishes. Indeed, all over the country— certainly in the Fens, in Yorkshire and in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire— the drying-up of marsh-lands is lamented by naturalists, whether botanical or entomological in interest ; and local groups have asked the planners for their preservation. Happily for our ornithologists the sewage farms, and indeed the reservoirs, more than compensate for the loss of natural conditions.
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