Translator's Note.) If you know the Crioceris, you may name as a lily the
plant which she devastates. It will not perhaps be the common or white
lily, but some other representative of the same family--Turk's cap lily,
orange lily, scarlet Martagon, lancifoliate lily, tiger-spotted lily,
golden lily--hailing from the Alps or the Pyrenees, or brought from China
or Japan. Relying on the Crioceris, who is an expert judge of exotic as
well as of native Liliaceae, you may name as a lily the plant with which
you are unacquainted and trust the word of this singular botanical master.
Whether the flower be red, yellow, ruddy-brown or sown with crimson spots,
characteristics so unlike the immaculate whiteness of the familiar flower,
do not hesitate, adopt the name dictated by the Beetle. Where man is liable
to mistake the insect is never mistaken.

This insect botany, a cause of such grievous tribulations, has always
impressed the worker in the fields, who for all that, is a very indifferent
observer. The man who was the first to see his cabbage-plot devastated by
caterpillars made the acquaintance of the Pieris. Science completed the
process, in its desire to serve a useful purpose or merely to seek truth
for truth's sake; and to-day the relations between the insect and the plant
form a collection of records as important from the philosophical as from
the practical, agricultural point of view. What is much less familiar to
us, because it touches us less nearly, is the zoology of the insect, that
is to say, the selection which it makes, to feed its larva, of this or that
animal species, to the exclusion of others. The subject is so vast that a
volume were not sufficient to exhaust it; besides, data are lacking in the
vast majority of cases. It is reserved for a still very distant future to
raise this point of biology to the level already reached by the question of
vegetable diet. It will be enough if I contribute a few observations
scattered through my writings or my notes.