84 THE COMMONER BUTTERFLIES. 



11. Genus Vanessa. 



VANESSA CARDUI— THE PAINTED LADY, or THISTLE 



BUTTERFLY. 



(Cyntliia cardui, Pyrameis cardai.) 



Butterfly. — Upper surface of wings blacki.sh brown, lieavily 

 and irregularly marked with orange; apical half of fore wings 

 uneqnally spotted with white and hind wings with a premarginal 

 series of round black spots. Under surface of fore wings like 

 the upper with exaggerated markings; of hind wings lieavily 

 marbled and transversely lined with a mingling of white, oliva- 

 ceous brown, and gray, the submarginal spots of the upper sur- 

 face becoming more or less perfect and unequal peacock-eye 

 ocelli, occurring in nearly all the interspaces. Expanse 2^-3 

 inches. 



Caterpillar. — Head blackish with pale hairs, not spined on 

 summit. Body spinous, dingy olivaceous yellow, with a more or 

 less inconspicuous delicate tracery of paler color and a mottling 

 of velvety black, varying considerably in relative amount, and 

 with a conspicuous infrastigmatal yellow stripe; spines, including 

 a mediodorsal one on both first and second abdominal segments, 

 yellowish, the spinules of the apical circlet as long as the spine 

 below the circlet; hairs on body much more than half as long as 

 the spines. Length \\ inches. 



Chrysalis. — Greenish, nacreous, or bluish white, delicately 

 creased with black and banded with light brown or livid, the 

 tubercles often gold-tipped; no distinct supralateral tubercle on 

 eighth abdominal segment, and the wing tubercles blunter liuui 

 in the other species of the genus. Length somewhat less than 1 

 inch. 



The eggs, which are barrel-shaped, a third higher than 

 broad, with about sixteen thin high vertical ribs and pale 

 green, are laid singly upon the npper surface of the leaves 

 of the food-plant and hatch in from six to eight days. 

 The caterpillar feeds upon almost any kind of thistle, 

 which is its favorite plant, but also upon other Comj^osite 

 plants, especially x\naphalis, and it is also partial to Mal- 

 vaceae. On hatching the caterpillar leaves its egg-shell 



