224 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



butterfly must deposit its eggs on some other plant, so that it is evidently 

 much less limited in its diet than many of our caterpillars. 



The egg is a beautiful object, blue-green, flattened and depressed at 

 the top, and covered with a net work like lace ; raised on the surface. 



The larvae, when full grown, are a little over one fourth of an inch 

 long and in shape a long oval, the head very small, black, and drawn — 

 when at rest — within the next segment, which falls over the head like a 

 hood. The body is green, dark dorsally, pale at the sides, and is marked 

 dorsally by eight sagittate, tuberculated, yellow-green spots, one on each 

 segment, pointing forwards, and truncated. 



The chrysalis is dark brown, covered with minute hairs ; of a long oval 

 shape, compressed at the middle. Length tV inch. 



We obtained eggs of Thecla poeas also, but only after trying many 

 species of plants, as the food plant of this butterfly was entirely a matter 

 of conjecture. But several eggs were laid on Blackberry. The larvae 

 hatched, but did not eat, and soon died. 



Eggs of Phyciodes tharos were obtained on grass, after trying the 

 butterfly on every plant we could think of. The eggs were laid on the 

 leaves and stems of a clump of grass placed under a glass jar. Many 

 were laid directly on the sides of the jar. These eggs hatched, but the 

 caterpillars refused to eat. 



We had better success with Phyciodes nycteis ; a female having been 

 confined with a plant of Actinomeris sqnarrosa, she forthwith proceeded 

 to deposit a large cluster of eggs, about ioo, side by side and in regular 

 rows, on the under side of a leaf. The larvae hatched after a long 

 interval, 13 or 14 days, and we at once from the cuticle of the leaf trans- 

 ferred them to a glass and supplied them with fresh leaves, and in due 

 time the caterpillars reached the third moult. At this they stopped 

 feeding, and are now in a state of hybernation. These caterpillars are 

 dark brown, covered with pencils of short bristles of the same hue, that 

 proceed from longitudinal rows of tubercles. When feeding they consume 

 the whole surface of the leaf, which becomes very filthy from the excre- 

 mentitious matter mixing with the juices of the leaf. But the caterpillars 

 emerge from the mine as clean as a mole from under the ground. 



I have also hybernating specimens of the larvae of Diana, cybele and 

 aphrodite, the eggs of which were obtained by Mr. Mead in the same 

 manner. I consider this process of obtaining eggs, provided the food 



