68 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



magic, and will not be seen until it is bright agnin. I have met with it 

 from June 28th to July i8th." As Mr. Bruce searched for two seasons 

 for this particular and exceedingly rare butterfly, this period of 20 days in 

 in which he found it, may be taken for the duration of the species in its 

 imago stage. It is not probable that the life of one of the individual 

 butterflies lasts one week. All butterflies die speedily after copulation 

 ( ^ ) and laying of eggs ( $ ), even in temperate regions. Many species 

 in the same regions come from pupa with eggs mature, and copulation 

 takes place almost at once, often before the wings of the female are dry, 

 and in one well-known case, f/. Charitojiia, often before the imago is out 

 of the pupa shell. We may be sure that nature would allow of no loss of 

 time at 13,000 elevation. The existence of the species must depend on 

 getting the eggs laid and protected. Mr. Bruce is of the opinion that 

 there is an annual brood of the imago. 1 myself had thought there could 

 be but one every two years, from my experience with allied larvae, which 

 are excessively slow in growth My images of Ga/athea, as stated, 

 showed 17 days between the emerging of the first and the last from pupa, 

 and yet they were all hatched on same day. The 20 days spoken of by 

 Mr. Bruce, as said above, represents the time in which the species was^ 

 alive in the imago, not the life of one individual by any means. Spend- 

 ing therefore 51 weeks out of 52 in, or on, or under the ground as egg, 

 larva, or ])upa, one week in the imago, hiding among the rocks whenever 

 the sun is obscured, and it is often obscured, or when fierce winds blow, 

 and there must be very little time when a stiff breeze or a tempest is not 

 blowing, the temperature every night, as Mr. Bruce tells us, as low as .30° 

 Far., at the least, ice forming wherever there is a bit of water — is it 

 possible to conceive an existence more unsuited for a creature dependent 

 on sunshine than this Magdalena lives, imprisoned on those summits ? 

 Yet, the species must have lived so through untold ages. 



For the history of Semidea, in New Hampshire, I will quote from Mr. 

 Scudder, in his grand work, the Butt. N. E., pages 589 et seq : "These 

 two butterflies (Argynnis Moiitimis and Chionobas Semidea) may be 

 looked upon as the oldest inhabitants of New England, which followed 

 the retreating ice sheet in its progress northward. They were the first of 

 their tribe to fly over the barren fields of New England, where the earliest 

 verdure began to follow the withdrawing ice, and moving with it, step by 

 step, were at last, some of them, beguiled by the local glaciers in the 



