THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 223 



to the under surface, with an irregular streak of bright red running through 

 its lower portion. The body also has a downy look occasioned by its 

 being thickly clothed with very minute pale hairs. 



The chrysalis is about seven-tenths of an inch long, attached at its 

 base, and girt across the middle with a silken thread. Its colour is pale 

 green with a yellowish tinge, with a purplish red line on each side of the 

 head, darker lines down the middle both in front and behind, and with a 

 yellowish stripe along the sides of the hinder segments. 



During the heat of summer the chrysalis state usually lasts about ten 

 days. A day or so before the butterfly escapes the chrysalis becomes 

 darker and semi-transparent, the markings on the wings showing plainly 

 through the enclosing membrane. 



NOTES ON THE EARLY STAGES OF SOME OF OUR 



BUTTERFLIES. 



BY W. H. EDWARDS, COALBURGH, W. VA. 



I herewith send you some memoranda of what I have done during the 

 past summer, largely owing to the assistance of Mr. Mead. I consider it 

 my most successful season in the way of obtaining larvae and eggs. One 

 of the most interesting species we discovered was Lycaena pseudargiolus. 

 Mr. Mead noticed a female hovering about flowers of Actinomeris 

 squarrosa, which is a weed found hereabouts in company with A. helian- 

 thoides — the last being a thousand-fold most numerous — and suspecting 

 that she was ovipositing, he made a careful examination of the plant. He 

 found several eggs laid directly on the flowers ; then capturing two or 

 three of the females, he tied them in a muslin bag over a bunch of these 

 flowers (growing), the result of which was that many eggs were obtained. 

 From those in the bag a few caterpillars were hatched and finally brought 

 to maturity. They fed on the petals of the flowers. It became difficult 

 to obtain food for them, as no plant of A. squarrosa could be found in 

 the vicinity of my house, and we tried them on the other species (helian- 

 thoides), and this answered equally well. Last week the caterpillars that 

 had escaped one accident or another, formed chrysalids in the same 

 flower heads. In summer, as no species of Actitiomeris is in bloom, the 



