462 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Fol. XXVL 



bewildering medley of colour. All the butterflies are males : half 

 a dozen copper-coloured Curetis thetis, brilliant irridescent-blue 

 Hypolimnas holina and tnisippus, dozens of Catopsilia, a passing, 

 darting streak of Charaxes imna or, perhaps, even Charaxes schreiberi, 

 two or three Charaxes aihamas, two or three golden Cynthia saloma 

 males with an occasional green female ; Doleschallia polyhete, Kallima 

 wardi, Athyma, Neptis, Skippers, Blues, &c., &c. It may sound 

 exaggerated but it is not ; it should be seen to be appreciated. A 

 carpet of living colour ! Camena argentea knows all about it, for it is 

 in such places it was first caught and may always be found. The 

 female is practically never seen and, until one was caught in Karwar 

 on the hill-top where she had presumably, just come by chance, the 

 sex was quite unknown. Afterwards another was also casually 

 captured b}^ a mere fluke, also on the hills. They were both looked 

 upon as terrific prizes. That was in 1898 or a year or two previous 

 to that. Great and continuous eft'orts were thereafter made to find 

 the caterpillar and, until the year 1911, in vain. It was then disco- 

 vered feeding on Viscum angulatum at Menshe in the Siddapur Taluka 

 of the Kanara District in Bombay. This Viscum is a mistletoe, a 

 parasite on, chiefly, Olea dioica belonging to the Ash family and a 

 common tree in the evergreen jungles of the Western Ghats. It 

 generally grows on rather sterile soil and is plentiful in the opener 

 parts of the hills and uplands where the soil has been eroded and 

 the rock exposed in the course of long periods of firing, hacking and 

 cattle-grazing. The larva may also be found on Viscum capitellatum 

 which grows much on such low shrubby plants as Vitex negundo, 

 though also on large trees such as Dalbergia latifolia, the Blackwood, 

 Rosewood or Shisam. Viscum is, rather like the home mistletoe, 

 especially in the whitish, wax-like, round fruit ; angulatum is always 

 leafless, hanging in great bunches of long, bare, thin twigs or branches 

 from the host-tree. Capitellatum has much thicker stems and grows 

 upright and also has thick, very obovate and rather heart-shaped 

 leaves. 



The following is a history of the stages of the larva : — 



Egg laid on 26th January. 



Larva emerged . . . . 1st February. 



First moult . . . . . 3rd midday. 



Second moult, eat the skin . 6th about daybreak. 

 Third moult . . . . . . 9th at 8 a.m. 



Fourth moult . . . . 11th at 8 p.m. 



Changed to pupa . . . . 17th in the night. 



The larva stopped eating on the 16th and settled down to change. 



The butterfly came out a week afterwards on the 24th. Thus it 



takes about a month from the laying of the egg to the mature insect. 



The habitat of the species is Bhutan, Sikkim, Burma, Southern 



India ; and de Niceville gives also Ceylon. 



