THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. - 51 



albinic females in spring was based, not on dried specimens, but on per- 

 sonal observation. Such females are seen by me here, at Coalburgh, 

 every spring. I took one in my net early in 1881, thinking before I struck 

 it that it was a large P. Rapae , and same day I saw another. In my note 

 book I recorded, 1874, 8th May, that I took an albino female Philodice. 

 But as it might be said that albinos were to be expected at the south, but 

 still were not to be found at the north, I wrote Mr. Lintner for such 

 information as he could give on the matter. He replied, 27th July, 1881 : 

 " I was at Albany yesterday and a friend showed me a beautiful white 

 female Philodice taken near Centre, on May 15th. 'On 20th June, he took 

 six more." So that albinic females do appear in the early spring brood, in 

 New York as well as in West Virginia, and the foregoing generalization is 

 erroneous. 



10. Upon Certain Alleged Peculiarities in the History of Satyrus 

 Alope. 



Mr, Scudder says, 1. c, page 132, it " first appears on the wing in the 

 early half of July. . . . The females live a long while before deposit- 

 ing a single egg ; the earliest record I have of this event is the 22nd of 

 August, or from five to six weeks after the first appearance of females ; they 

 continue to lay eggs until the end of the first week in September \ and in 

 keeping ivith the indolence of the fetnales is the duration of the egg state — 

 from 3 to 4 weeks, a period longer than in any butterfly known to me 

 where the eggs hatch at all the same season. The earliest caterpillars 

 therefore appear by the middle of September," etc. I spent some time at 

 Martha's Vineyard, Mass., in July, 1S77, at Oak Bluffs, and on the grassy 

 plains back of the town I searched daily for butterflies. The first Alope 

 seen were 2 males, and they were just from chrysalis, 23rd July. On 

 26th, the first female was seen, and I took 12 ^, i ^. I then left the 

 Vineyard and Mr. Mead came there just at that time, and set to work to 

 obtain eggs of Alope for me. On loth Aug., or 15 days after the first 

 female had been seen by me, he began to shut up females in a bag over a 

 plant of grass in a tin can, and 22nd Aug., at Coalburgh, I received from 

 him 125 eggs, laid prior to Aug. i8th. These began to hatch 27th Aug., 

 or 17 days after the first female was enclosed. This certainly is not a long 

 period for the egg as compared with some other butterflies, especially the 

 large species of Argynnis. The period of A. Cybele I have found to run 

 from 12 to 24 days ; of A. Diana 15 to 26 3 A. Idalia, 25 ; A. Alcestis, 27 



