ART. 11 NOTES ON THE MELITAETD BUTTEKFLY CLARK Itj 



to feed, after each meal wandering away and seeking any convenient 

 support, preferably dried stalks and leaves of cat-tails and grasses 

 and herbaceous annuals, on which to rest. After resting they retrace 

 the silken thread they always spin wherever they go, wandering 

 down from their supports and back to the Chelojie. If their thread 

 is broken and they can not find the Chelone, they will make a tem- 

 porary meal of a large number of different kinds of plants. From 

 our observations we believe that normally the turtlehead is their sole 

 food, and other plants are eaten only through necessity. 



We have seen large numbers of the caterpillars on the Chelone, and 

 have observed that such caterpillars were always busily engaged in 

 feeding. They seem to avoid remaining on this plant longer than is 

 absolutely necessary. They attack mostly the larger leaves, eating 

 inward from about the middle of the edge and thus excavating large 

 rounded sectors. When feeding they are very conspicuous, and they 

 make not the slightest attempt at concealment. 



When on the Chelone the caterpillars are usualty to be found in 

 groups often of as many as a dozen or more. There seems to be no 

 reason why they should concentrate on a few sprigs of the plant out 

 of hundreds growing together. We believe that the apparent socia- 

 bility of the nearly full-grown caterpillars is merely the result of their 

 following up each others' silken trails if they happen to cross them in 

 returning to the food plant. 



The first act of the little caterpillar on leaving the egg is to spin a 

 thread of silk, and all their lives they spin wherever they go. Small 

 caterpillars after hibernation spin an astonishing amount of silk in 

 going back and forth to their food plants, and if they are kept in 

 small containers this has to be constantly cleaned out. This habit 

 of spinning abundant silk is kept up until pupation. 



From our observations we are led to believe that at all stages the 

 caterpillars feed at any time of the day or night, provided only that 

 the temperature is sufficiently high. Our small caterpillars in the 

 heated house fed equally at all hours. At any given time, day or 

 night, a few would be feeding and the majority resting as far away 

 as they could get from the food plant. In the field we found the 

 large caterpillars feeding at all times of the day, and the caterpillars 

 we brought home fed ravenously at night. 



Bat at any given time there are always many more caterpillars to 

 be found resting on the surrounding herbage than feeding on the 

 Chelone. 



This habit probably results in a considerable wastage in caterpillars 

 each year, and probably also accounts to some extent for the very 

 great diversity in size, since not all of the smaller caterpillars are 

 parasitized. It is likely that in many cases the silken trails from the 



