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The Cosmopolite (Vanessa cardui Va-nes'sa)

Vanessa cardui (Va-nes'sa car'du-i) PLATE XXVI, FIG. 5, 6 This butterfly resembles the preceding very closely in color and markings. There is, however, a smaller proportion of orange markings; and on the lower surface of the hind wings there is a submarginal row of four or five eyelike spots. Expanse of wings two and one-half to three inches. CATERPILLAR.--Length one and one-fourth inches. The head is dark colored and has hairs on the top instead of spines. The body is dull greenish yellow mottled with black, and has a brighter yellow stripe along the side. The spines are bristly and yellowish in color.

Food-plants. Thistle, mallow, everlasting.

Nothing makes us feel more neighborly to Europe, Asia, Japan and Australia than to realize that the butterfly we saw this morning hovering over the thistle blossoms in the pasture is haunting the thistle blossoms of these diverse countries. The cosmopolite is the most widely distributed of any of our butterfly species; only South America and the Arctic regions are unfavored by the presence of this beautiful creature. It is a strong flyer and has been discovered hundreds of miles out at sea; and there are records that it migrates in flocks from clime to clime. On its rose-lined wings it rises to the cold heights of the Rockies, the White Mountains, the Alps, and the mountains of Asia. On these same exquisite wings it hovers over the open fields of India, Italy, Spain, Mexico and New Zealand, and over the tropical foliage of the Pacific Islands.

The colors and markings of the cosmopolite on the upper side of the wings are so like those of the preceding species that even the eyes of experts might not distinguish the two. The under side of the front wings bears the same rose-colored band, but each hind wing of the cosmopolite bears near the margin four small eye-spots instead of two large ones as with the painted beauty. In fact the under side of the hind wings of the cosmopolite, with its eye-spots set in complicated patterns of white and brown and purple tints, looks like a web from Persian looms.

One would think that the caterpillar would feel quite protected by the sharp "prickers" that cover. its food plant, but from the beginning it protects itself with a nest. At first it lives beneath a leaf covered by a web. Then it takes possession of the upper side, drawing the leaf together for protection. Then it makes a nest of several leaves held together by a web which has woven into it in exposed places bits of the leaves and the thistle spines bitten off for the purpose. The pretty pearly, greenish or bluish chrysalid seamed with black and banded with pale brown and set with gilt tubercles may be found in the last nest of the caterpillar. In the northern United States the butterfly is double-brooded and winters in the adult stage. In Southern countries the cosmopolite is on the wing all winter. Over the fields where the brown quails whistle, Over the ferns where the rabbits lie, Floats the tremulous down of a thistle.

Is it the soul of a butterfly?

HIGGINSON.