854 JO URN A L, BO MB A Y NA TURA L HISTOR Y SOCIETY, Vol. XIX. 



fastening in the same way with silks to prevent them becoming detached 

 and falling to the ground : so that the part of the leaf beyond 

 where the midrib is nearly cut through hangs down laxly and withers. 

 The egg larva cuts through the stalks of a few leaflets at the 

 point of one of the pinnse as often as not and, as it grows, con- 

 tinues the work. The full grown larva changes its leaf perhaps once 

 or even twice occasionally, treating it each time as above described. 

 It lies on the last pinna, hidden by the leaflets and other pinnae. It 

 nupates there also. The larva eats the withered leaves as long as they 

 are not too dry. It resembles them in colour very much and there is 

 no doubt that the ruse acts as a protection against predaceous spiders 

 and birds to a certain extent. The pupse however are much parasi- 

 tised by ichneumon wasps of small size : the ichneumon laying its eggs 

 in the larva. It would therefore be more correct to say that the latter 

 is parasitised and not the pupa. The butterfly never rises much above 

 the surface of the ground and is a weak flier, generally resting on 

 the leaves of bushes in fairly thick places : and also genemlly 

 somewhere in the neighbourhood of the foodplant of its larva. The 

 wings are held fully open or slightly inclined to the horizontal when 

 basking in the sun but they are closed over the back in dull weather 

 or when the insect seeks protection. The flight is something after 

 the manner of an yl/A?/?wa, the wings being hardly ever brought to 

 touch over the back though they are raised higher than in that genus 

 between the downward strokes. The insect is very fairly common in 

 places though perhaps not as plentiful as Neptis eiirynome and it is 

 also perhaps slightly scarcer in open country than that species. There 

 is another larva very much like this one which, however, has the 

 tubercles much more developed, in fact they are large enough to be 

 called spinous processes : the head also has each lobe produced into a 

 small point: the description is as follows : — 



Larva. — Is like that of hordonia in shape and markings and, to a certain ex- 

 tent also in habits. The head is trapeze-shaped, the narrower end being the 

 vertex, and is divided down the middle by a depressed line ; the vertex of each 

 lobe is produced into a short blunt point, the two points not widely separated. 

 The four pairs of fleshy tubercles on segments 3, 4, 6 and 1 are thrice as long as 

 in R. hordonia and are directed slightly backwards, the tubercles of each segment 

 are not connected by a ridge as in that species. The spiracles and surface of 

 larva are the same. The colour is : a white doraal line ; the " saddle " on doi-sum 

 of sewments 4-10 is brown-green or red-brown of varying shades in different 



