SIR,—Your correspondent, Mr. Michael Campbell, is quite clearly accurate in
his observations and it should suffice to say that his butterfly was behaving in the way usual of its kind. The question I would put to you, sir, is why does a person with reasonable access to a library (London, W2, is not remote) find it easier to write a letter to the Spectator about such an ordinary occurrence when the most elementary book would, have told him that his butterfly was a Small Tortoiseshell (or Peacock—but not a Red Admiral) butterfly, 'that Small Tortoiseshells (and Peacocks) pass the winter in the adult stage in hibernation, and that they come forth in the first warm spell in March (March 2 in Leeds this year)? Mr. Campbell could buy a book on insects and find more things around his Cotswold cottage to interest him and perhaps give him the pleasure in discovery that his butterfly apparently did.—Yours faithfully, J. H. FLINT
Central Library. Leeds, I
Previous page
