THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 17 



phonies. I forgot to get food for them before it froze, but found in a book 

 a lot of leaves of Ptelea trifoliata (Hop-tree) gathered two years ago last 

 spring. These I soaked over night, laid between blotting paper, and put 

 in the glass. The larvae eat them readily." This shows the way to 

 carrying through belated larvge in the fall, but also how larv?e from far off 

 regions may be saved, if the dried leaves of their plants are sent with 

 them. 



7. Larvge supposed to have been killed by Electricity, 



Miss Annie M. Wittfeld wrote me 23rd Sept., 1884, from Georgiana, 

 Fla.: " Yesterday about daybreak, the sky was completely clear. Some 

 twenty minutes later a small black cloud rose in the southeast, and moved 

 very fast, though there was a dead calm with us. All of a sudden came 

 a stroke of lightning and at the same instant a fearful clap of thunder and 

 a puff of wind that took all before it. It lasted but a second and then all 

 was clear and calm again. After breakfast I went to my glass of 

 Limenitis Eros larvae, of which I had six fully grown, and found all to be 

 dead and stiff, All my other larvge were not affected ; these last were in 

 wooden boxes, while the Eros were between glass." 



8. On pairing Butterflies in Captivity. 



It is common enough for certain Sphinges and Bombycid?e to mate in 

 , boxes, and immediately after leaving pupae. This may happen when the 

 eggs are mature at birth of insect. With many species of butterflies the 

 eggs do not mature for several days after chrysalis, as is the case with the 

 large Argynnids, but with others, as Phyciodes Tharos and Nycteis and 

 Myrina, they are mature from the start. I have not experimented in this 

 direction, but from what Miss E. L. Morton, of Newburgh, N. Y., tells 

 me, it may be possible to induce butterflies of some species to mate and 

 so to obtain eggs, for the eggs are laid very shortly after copulation, as I 

 have several times observed. Miss Morton had by mistake placed a 

 male Satyrus Alope under a bag of netting on grass. Three days later 

 she introduced a female, which up to that time was supposed to be the 

 second female. Almost immediately the pair mated, and a few hours 

 later eggs were laid. In attempting to get eggs in this manner, it would 

 be best that a male caught in the field should be introduced to a female 

 just from chrysalis, for in the field it is these last which are sought by the 

 males. Almost always when a pair of butterflies in copulation are taken 



