HYBERNATION OF CERTAIN BRITISH BUTTERFLIES IN THE IMAG) STATE. 203 



just beneath the projecting edge of the tread above, the extremity of 

 its wings projecting beyond the tread. Here it remained for three 

 months without moving, except that it shifted its position six or eight 

 times in the course of the winter, sometimes forward, sometimes 

 backward, within the range of about an inch. At first the plane of 

 the closed wings was perfectly horizontal, but about the middle of 

 January they became slightly oblique, and the morning of the day it 

 left its station the obliquity was somewhat increased. It was watched 

 daily the winter through, and the wings were always in the attitude 

 taken at complete repose in the summer. When, on the last day of 

 February, it left its station, it took up another, head downward, on the 

 cellar wall, near a window where it caught the sun's rays a part of the 

 day, and here it remained motionless for five days more, except for 

 slight shifts as before, and that when the sun struck it, its antenna; 

 were thrust forward and parted a little, instead of being ensconced 

 beneath the wings." 



Of the hybernation of AijlaU urticae, the Rev. 0. Pickard- 

 Cambridge, gives an account {Entoin., iii., p. 299) of a specimen 

 which entered the parish church of Winterbourne-Tomson, towards the 

 end of August, settled on a projecting rafter, and remained there 

 throughout the autumn and winter, "evidently never having once 

 moved from its first position," until May 5th the following year, when 

 it came off its perch and flew briskly about the church. " Its period 

 of motionless repose had thus been just nine months, and it was 

 apparently as fresh in colour and condition as if just out of the 

 chrysalis." 



There is no doubt that each species has its own peculiar hiding 

 places — clefts of rocks, hollow trunks of trees, in stacked wood, barns, 

 church steeples, etc. Probably the two first-mentioned are the 

 commonest in nature, and some species, perhaps, simply hang beneath 

 the branches of trees. Scudder says, " Woodmen sometimes, in cleaving 

 open a tree, will discover a little colony of hybernating butterflies, as 

 has been done in the case of Amma a)-chippits." As we are much 

 inclined to doubt the natural hybernation of this species in the imago 

 state, we should be interested in any further records of the habit in 

 this species. Newman {British Butterflies, p. 17) states that he once 

 found more than forty specimens of Vanessa io hybernating inside a 

 hollow oak. 



We have previously noticed Scudder's (Weisenhiitter's) remarks 

 about the hybernation of Envanessa antiopa, but his exactly parallel views 

 of the hybernation of Pijrameis cardui and other species in North America 

 are most remarkable. Of P. cardui he writes : — " It hybernates in the 

 butterfly state (perhaps also some autumn chrysalids pass over the 

 winter), and so appears in early spring " [The Butterfiies of the Northern 

 United States and Canada, p. 85). We should require much evidence 

 of a very exact nature before we could suppose this possible, but 

 Scudder seems to think it the most natural thing possible that butter- 

 flies should hybernate in this haphazard fashion, for he says of its 

 near ally, P. hnntera : — " It is double-brooded in the north, hyber- 

 nating as a butterfly, and also to some extent as a chrysalis.'''' The 



* These remarks show that Scudder does not mean to suggest that the two 

 different methods of hybernation are adopted at different latitudes, but that both 

 occur in the same latitude. 



