78 



OUTLINES OF ENTOMOLOGY. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



Order lepidoptera. Sub-Order R h o pal o c era . 



BUTTERFLIES. 



[Pig. 33.] 



Hackberry butterfly, Apaturat-flyton, with larva and chrysalis. After Riley. 



Of all the insect tribes the butterflies are the popular favorites. 

 None of the prejudice with which insects are generally regarded seems 

 to attach to them. Used by the classic writers to symbolize the soul, 

 they have ever continued to be favorites of the poets, and are associated 

 with whatever is most airily graceful and beautiful in nature. 



The larvse of butterflies feed exclusively on vegetation, each species 

 being restricted to one, or at most to two or three kinds of plants. In 

 their general form they do not vary so much as the larvje of moths, 

 being all more or less cylindrical and always possessing the full com- 

 plement of six legs and ten prolegs. The head, though not always large, 

 is quite distinct, usually with a somewhat fretted or stippled surface, and 

 in a few species, adorned with branching horns (see Fig. 33fe), or spiny 

 tubercles. The surface of the body is in some species smooth and 

 velvety, in others bearing fleshy horns and protuberances or covered 

 with spines. 



The pupae are naked, except in the species constituting one family, 

 where they are slightly enclosed in threads of silk. They are, as a rule, 

 very angular, especially toward the anterior end, and are either pendent 

 by the tail, or are supported in an upright position by a band of silk 

 which the larva, before changing, contrives to weave across its back. 



Some of the characters by which butterflies are grouped into 

 families and genera are found in the outline and venation of the wings, 

 the shape of the club of the antennae and of the palpi, the presence or 



