CARNIVOROUS BUTTERFLIES CLARK 489 



has a caterpillar of L. alcon thriving in it. At the same time Mr, 

 Chapman had larvae in the nests of Myrmica scabrinodis and M. 

 hcevinodis. 



Doctor Chapman observed that when ants were placed in a new 

 nest they refused to accept a larva of L. alcon, although they will- 

 ingly accepted that of L. arion. 



Spalgis epius 



Mr. Lionel de Niceville in 1890 published a note sent him by Mr. E. 

 Ernest Green from Pundul-oya, Ceylon, in which he said : " I have 

 several times reared an insect indistinguishable from Spalgis epius 

 from a carnivorous larva that associates with and feeds upon Dac- 

 tylopius adonidum (the 'mealybug' of planters). My larvce were 

 dull olive green above, with numerous minute dark bristles and a 

 lateral fringe of brown hairs, beneath pale green, slightly suffused 

 with pink on the anterior segments. It partially covers and con- 

 ceals itself with the mealy secretions from the Dactylopius. Pupa 

 various shades of brown, wing cases pale." Mr. de Niceville added 

 that the larva is furnished with long irregular divergent processes, 

 as in the larva of Rathinda, but here the tubercles appear to be ar- 

 ranged more regularly, while some are much shorter than others. 



Mr. E. H. Aitken in December, 1891, saw a female S. epius flying 

 suspiciously about a bush and thought it might be laying its eggs. 

 This led him to examine the plant, and almost at once he found an 

 unmistakable lycsenid pupa. Then he instituted a regular search, 

 but not a larva could he find, nor any trace of one. The leaves of 

 the plant were nowhere eaten, and it was too much infested with 

 "mealy-bugs" to afford fresh wholesome food to delicate insects. 

 He had almost given up the search when he noticed that some of 

 the bugs were enormously large. He brushed the white woolly 

 secretion off of these, and they were uncommonly like lycsenid 

 larvfe. They were of the wood-louse form so common among the 

 larvae of that family, of a dark greenish brown color, wuth a few 

 hairs scattered over the back and a fringe of bristles running along 

 the side and around the front where the second segment conceals 

 the head. With this fringe he saw them shovel a quantity of the 

 white stuff onto their backs and clothe their nakedness after he had 

 denuded them. 



"Watching them with a lens, he saw that they were feeding among 

 the " mealy-bugs." They would pass over the larger individuals and 

 bury their heads in the downy covering of a little one, and though he 

 could not say he actually saw that they devoured it, he was quite 

 satisfied that this was what they did. So he secured a number and 



