62 SOUTH-AFEICAX BUTTERFLIES. 



Pupa. — Sharply angnlated, slender, head beaked. Light-brown, 

 varied with darker-brown ; a white, pink-spotted, longitudinal stripe 

 on abdominal segments. Kepresented as suspended to the stalk of 

 some plant. 



The above descriptions of larva and pupa are made from figures in Plate 

 xii. (f. 9, 9a.) of Horstield and Moore's Catalogue of Lepidoptera in the East 

 India Company's Museum, vol. i. The food-plant of the larva is not stated, 

 nor is its locality given. 



Colonel Yerbury, quoted by Mr. Butler in Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 

 1884, p. 492, and 1886, p. 376, notes that near Aden he had reared 

 caterpillars of this butterfly (" Lordaca, Walk.") on Capparis galcata, and 

 that in Western India they feed on a Ccqiparis with dark-red blossom 

 {C. horrida). 



Mr. W. D. Gooch's notes and outline sketches of the earlier stages 

 of Mesentina near D'Urban, in Natal, agree very fairly with the figures 

 above described, and may be thus summarised, viz. : — 



Larva. — Yellowish olive-green on back, marked down the middle 

 with a double dark-brownish line ; on each side a deep citrine-green 

 stripe, bearing on each segment a minute yellow spot, — these lateral 

 stripes inflect a little on eleventh segment, and join dorsally at their 

 extremities on twelfth segment ; below lateral stripes yellowish-green ; 

 just above legs with whitish-grey pubescence, inclining to form a tuft 

 on each segment ; on second segment two longer subdorsal tufts of 

 similar hair projecting above the head. Head bright reddish-brown. 



Pupa. — Very light-brownish, dorsally flecked with dark-brown ; 

 edges of wing- covers and part of neuration dark; angular projections 

 on each side of dorsal base of abdomen black ; lateral streaks of abdo- 

 men, and line along median dorsal carina of thorax white. Form quite 

 like that of the pupa of Scvcrina, Cram. 



This well-known species has a wide range over all the Ethiopian region 

 (except, apparently, the tropical north-west forest sub-region), and over South- 

 West Asia, from Syria to Calcutta. In South Africa it seems to be far more 

 numerous in the uplands of the interior than on the coast. In Natal during 

 the summer of 1867 I met with only four specimens; and not many examples 

 have reached me in collections made in that Colony. Colonel Bowker described 

 it as very numerous all over Basutoland, and Mr. H. L. Feltham informs me 

 that in Griqualand West it is by far the most abundant species of the genus. 

 Two stragglers of this butterfly have been recorded by me as visiting Cape 

 Town, — the first taken in tlie Museum enclosure in April 1873, and a second, 

 closely observed by myself for some time, on 14th April 1878, about flowers in 

 the Botanic Gardens. Several times, however, in the later summer I have 

 seen on Table Mountain a "White" hurrying past, which, although I could 

 not identify it, was clearly not the only resident species, P. Hellica, and very 

 probably was Mesentina. The spiecies has occurred in all the collections I have 

 seen from Damaraland ; in a small one formed by Mr. John A. Bell there were 

 as many as thirty-eight specimens of it. Boisduval (op. cit., p. 502) notes that 

 in some parts of Africa this butterfly at certain seasons migrates in innumerable 

 hosts, but he gives no authority for the statement. Colonel Bowker noticed in 

 Basutoland that numbers of Mesentina flew in an eastward direction. 



