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Common Sulphur
Butterfly.--We are all familiar with this species, the "puddle butterfly" of our childhood, which sits in swarms on moist places by the wayside, and makes the clover-fields gay with the flash of yellow wings in summer. There are many aberrational forms, albinos and negroes, white forms and dark forms, dwarfed forms and large forms, but in the main the species is remarkably constant, and seasonal forms and distinctly local races do not abound as in the case of the preceding species. Expanse, male, 1.25-1.80 inch; female, 1.60-2.25 inches.
Early Stages.--The food-plant is clover. The eggs are pale yellow, changing, after being laid, to crimson. The caterpillar is slender, green, striped longitudinally with paler green. The chrysalis is pale green.
The species ranges from New England to Florida, and west-ward to the Rocky Mountains.