OLD FRIENDS IN NEW WORLD W I L F R I D S. GEORGE
June weeks in Toronto—would the insects of southern Canada differ much from those I collect in Suffolk?
THREE
T h e spring of 1974 was late in Ontario, but arriving on lOth June the airport grasses waved much as they had at home. But my hay-fever had vanished (only in the third week did it trouble me a little). In the suburb of Scarborough I looked for weeds. Our hosts had groundsel, shepherd's purse, white clover, yarrow and dandelion, and elsewhere I saw hop trefoil, creeping thistle, meadow buttercup, creeping buttercup, dock, wall barley, fat hen and pineapple-weed. T h e house-sparrows and starlings I knew, but the 'robins' were far too big! Toronto is a great city of cars, concrete and open spaces, cut into by big semi-wooded ravines fifty to a hundred foot deep, where streams have eroded the grey clay soil as they tumble towards Lake Ontario. In these wild parks butterflies abound, including many species of Skippers. Some much resembled our Large, Small and Dingy Skippers, but were not the species I knew. Others were quite different—many were larger and darker. Canadian 'browns' rather resembled our Ringlets and Small Heaths, but were Little Woods Euptychia cymela and Piain Ringlets Coenonympha inornata. What looked to me like Clouded Yellows and their pale varieties, dashing over the wild red clover, were in fact their American relatives the Alfalfa Butterfly Colias eurytheme. Only once did I stalk our familiar Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta, and only once did I see its food-plant the stingingnettle (a fact that made collecting less painful than near Suffolk streams). Brambles, too, were absent, replaced by raspberries, and I never saw holly nor ivy—the winter must be too cold. A relative of the blackberry flowered profusely, attracting the great orange Monarch Butterflies Danaus plexippus—surely the great entomological sight of North America. A second rare British butterfly—our Camberwell Beauty (their Mourning Cloak) Nymphalis antiopa we saw three times, but all were very ragged insects, long out from hibernation. T h a t they had been on the wing some time was evident when I found a colony of a hundred or so of their larvae almost fully-grown on a willow bush. I was surprised to find very few 'white' butterflies, but perhaps there was a shortage of food. I finally took three of our Small Whites Pieris rapae Aying near a patch of cruciferous weeds. I would never have believed myself capable of chasing a 'cabbagewhite' u p a steep bank, disregarding a Monarch on the way! Another familiar pest was our Setaceous Hebrew Character Moth