280 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



Caladium leaf in a separate vase. Even then he was not safe, far 

 the two vases being one day unhappily set so close together that one 

 ©f the Calotropis leaves hung over so as to touch the Caladium leaf, 

 the Danaides crossed into their enemy's country and renewed their 

 attack. We could not see whether they actually bit him. If they 

 did, they did not seem to penetrate his skin. But they butted and 

 hustled him on both sides in a way that must have been painful to so 

 soft-bodied a creature, till at last he fell off the plant on to the floor 

 of the cage, where he lay stunned and apparently exhausted for nearly 

 half an hour. It may have been this treatment that drove him to 

 seek, sooner than he would have done, shelter in the pupa form in the 

 box of earth whence we afterwards had to rescue him from the ants. 

 For as an imago, though perfectly developed and well coloured, he 

 was under-seized. 



3. A change of leaf seems as bad for a caterpillar as a change of 

 milk for a baby : silkworms, no doubt, " as every school-boy knows/ 7 

 can be fed indiscriminately on mulberry, lettuce, or dandelion leaves 

 without worse effect than a difference in the colour of the silk. J5u4 

 this omnivoracity seems to be a peculiarity in the constitution of the 

 silkworm, induced, perhaps, by its Chinese education. With the wild 

 caterpillar of the Indian jungle, it is not so. To thrive, he must have 

 only that plant to which he has been accustomed from his earliest in- 

 fancy. Though caterpillars of the same species aie found on plants of 

 quite different species, and each will thrive equally well on its own 

 food-plant, yet the same individual should not be fed on a different 

 variety of plant, however closely allied to that which is its natural 

 food. Thus we found a caterpillar taken on a sweet lime* (Citrus 

 limetta) could not be fed with the leaves of a sour limef (Citrus 

 acida), nor even one found on a jungle mangcj: (Mangifera indica) 

 with leaves from a garden fruit tree. The new food will either be 

 entirely rejected, and the caterpillar die of starvation, or it will so 

 internally disagree that death will result from fermentation and 

 explosion, in the manner above described as the effect of handling. 



4. A caterpillar leaving its food-plant to wander about the cage,, 

 generally does so only in search of a quiet place to change its skin 

 or turn into a chrysalis. To be disturbed at such times, even by 

 benevolent attentions, is likely to result in disaster. The best way 

 is to leave it quite alone, only placing the food-plant near it in such a 



* Native name, Mita nimha. f Native name, Nimbu. % Native uaine, Ata. 



