# %\)t OCanabtan Entomologist. 



VOL. X. LONDON, ONT., JANUARY, 1878. No. 1 



NOTES ON LYCAENA PSEUDARGIOLUS AND ITS LARVAL 



HISTORY. 



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



On one of the last days of June, 1877, I observed a female pseudar- 

 giolus hovering about a flower-stalk of Cimicifuga racemosa, and it occurred 

 to me that here might be the food plant of the summer brood of this 

 butterfly, which I had for years been in search of. And thereupon I cap- 

 tured this female and confined her in a muslin bag upon one of the stalks. 

 Two days after I found several eggs and also young larvse, which last 

 must have come from eggs laid some days before. This led me to 

 examine other stalks, and I found quite a large number of both eggs and 

 larvse. The plant is called hereabouts " rattle-weed," and grows abund- 

 antly in the edges of the woods throughout this region. It sends up a 

 stalk, sometimes branching, four or five feet, terminating in a spike or 

 spikes, six to ten inches long, of round, greenish-white buds, which stand 

 upon short stems and are arranged in rows about the stalk, diminishing in 

 size till they reach the pointed top. The lower buds, when about the size 

 of a pea, open first, and the flowering proceeds gradually up the spike, so 

 that buds are found through a period of from four to six weeks. The 

 flowers exhale an intensely sweet odor. The larva of pseudargiolt/s, during 

 its younger stages, is white and so near the color of these buds that they are 

 well protected and difficult to find. In the later stages it may be white or 

 greenish, and often there are a few black or brown patches irregularly 

 scattered over the surface. ' When mature it is one-half inch long, and is 

 onisciform, like all Lycaenid larvse. The head is very small and is placed 

 on the end of a long green neck, which, at the junction, is of the diameter 

 of the head, but gradually enlarges and seems to be fixed at the extreme 

 hinder part of the next (or second) segment, which segment is hollowed 

 out to form a sheath for it. In the last larval stages the top of this seg- 

 ment is elevated and transversely compressed, and leans forward, shielding 



