COMMON BUTTERFLIES OF TRE PLAINS OF INDJA. 31 



wasps and the extreme pimorency of the odour must have a consider- 

 ably deterrent effect upon small enemies. The larva, when disturbed, 

 will throw its head back suddenly and bring the two organs into con- 

 tact with any exposed portion of its body, so that an attacker would 

 be liable to be touched by their somewhat glutinous surface with 

 impleasant result. 



The stinging irritant hairs of some moth caterpillars are very 

 well known to most residents in India from painful personal 

 experience. No butterfly larva possesses these though, as already 

 pointed out, many of them have an armature of spines, branched or 

 simple, disposed all over the surface of their bodies. What the 

 particular use of these spines is, cannot be said with certainty ; they 

 are not irritant and the only explanation that can be offered is that 

 they serve for protection against inimical attack to some extent, foi- 

 it is certain that such larvae, when touched, throw the head over the 

 back, bringing the tail end to meet it, thereby protecting the body 

 by an impenetrable network of spines bristling with sharp points 

 which it would puzzle any fly or wasp to get through. Junonia, 

 Hi/poUmnas, Kallima and their relations have these branched spines, 

 Charaxes (vide PI. I. fig. 4.) larvte, otherwise naked, have long 

 horns on the head like those of a bison with which they can 

 sweep the whole length of their backs and do so viciously 

 when touched. The larva of Neptk seeks protection by lying 

 hidden amongst leaflets which it detaches together with part 

 of the midrib of the Acacia leaves it feeds on, fastening 

 each part on with silk to prevent it dropping to the ground ; the leaf- 

 lets soon wither, become dry and look incapable of supporting insect 

 life of any kind (curiously enough N. viraja actually eats these leaf- 

 lets until they become too hard) and consequently are presumably 

 unattractive to the predacious spider, the great enemy of all small 

 larvae. Moduza procrls and the Athyma butterflies eat away th© 

 point of the leaf only leaving the midrib at the extreme end of which 

 the little larva sits, throwing up a rampart behind it, along the eaten 

 edge, of the refuse of the meals which have passed through its body 

 cemented together with silk from the spinneret and, often, even pro- 

 longs the midrib by adding little particles of the same substance 

 placed end to end. Life on the midrib is continued up to the third or 

 fourth stage during which the colour of the larva is more or less that 



