PUPAL MOULT OF AGRIADES CORIDON. 166 



ordinary. Polyommatus icariis, small, and with brown females with- 

 out a trace of blue. Aifriades coiidon, nearly over and not, I should 

 think, abundant. Of the Vanessids I only record one worn PtjranietH 

 cardui. The Melitaeae were represented by one very worn M. plioche, 

 and a brood of bright, but not large M. didtpna just coming out, 

 Melananjia (/alat/iea was fairly frequent in and around the quarries. 

 SattjriiH circe (one) would undoubtedly be common later. JliitparcJiia 

 semele, very fine and very abundant, as also were Parari/c nu'i/aera. 

 Epinephelc Jiirtina, E. ida, and K. paKipliai' — all abundant, the last very 

 worn. Coimoni/iiiiiha darns, a few, but very local, probably not fully 

 out; C /ja»;/;/(/7».s, decidedly scarce. Of the Hcsperidae,! saw a few 

 Erijnnis altheae, Adopaea tiara (tJiainiias), and Tln/welicun actaeon. 



The moths, so far as my notes go, seem to have been very little in 

 evidence, for I can only record five species, viz., Acidnlia oc'hrata and 

 A. rnbiijinata (1), Ererijextis extiinalift (1), Odontia dentalis (1), and 

 Enhlemma snavis (2). 



It should be noted that the actual Alpines were never explored by 

 me, but only the country lying at the foot of that range. 



Pupal Moult of Agriades coridon ; The Maxillary Pocket of 

 Plebeiid Pupa. {Witli tno plates.) 



By T. A. CHAPMAN, M.D., F.E.S. 



Amongst other items communicated to Mr. Tutt will be found in 

 vol. X. of Brithli Lepidojitera, p. 226, an account of the pupa of I'lebeius 

 argus (aet/on), together with an illustrative plate. I there described a 

 curious pocket to contain the extremities of the maxilbB. This passes, 

 so to speak, into the interior of the pupa, just as a pocket is inside 

 a garment, though with an opening outside. In the case of the pupa 

 the opening is covered by the ends of the wings and antenna soldered 

 down, not unlike a flap covering the opening of a pocket. The 

 maxillfe dip under the antennae, where these meet each other in the 

 middle line, but pass down behind them, and have 0'6mm. or so of 

 their extremities in this pocket. The arrangement is well seen in the 

 photographs from the pupa shell mounted in balsam making the 

 structures transparent. In the pupa, viewed from outside, unprepared, 

 no trace of this pocket is seen, the antennsc and wings abutting on the 

 anterior margin of the fifth abdominal segment in the usual way. The 

 additional length of proboscis so accommodated is so small that it 

 hardly seems worth while, but the arrangement is very interesting in 

 comparison with the ways in which a long proboscis is disposed of, by 

 an external process, into which a loop near the base projects in some 

 Sphiiujes, and a terminal projection holds the end of the proboscis in 

 Plmia and Cucidlia. 



I revert to the matter now, in order to record an observation of the 

 way in which this curious pocket is formed. 



On June 21st, 1911, I had the luck to watch a larvie of Ai/riadcs 

 coridon moult to pupa. The larval head is, as usual, moulted entire, 

 but has a hood of prothoracic skin all round it, the dehiscence being 

 across the back of the prothorax. The lining of the oesophagus (and 

 stomach ?) withdrawn is about 3'Omm. in length, the middle milli- 

 metre being a stifi chitinous piece, the end very delicate and slender. 



