SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 



forest that it need be looked for. My garden is on the river side not more than 

 forty rods from the woods and planted with flowers in masses exjjressly to at- 

 tract butterflies, Petunias, Single Zinnias, Phloxes, &e. At all times swarms of 

 Papilios are to be seen, and when Cybele is in season it also abounds. But I 

 do not recollect seeing more than one Diana there in years, and it flew about 

 as if supicious of the place and presently darted off to the woods again. On 

 the 10th of July of the present year, (1872) when travelling over the James River 

 and Kanawha Turnpike, in Fayette Co. W. Va., west of Big Sewell Mountain, in 

 course of a drive of ten miles through the white-oak forest, I saw twenty-five or 

 thirty fresh males, no doubt that morning emerged from chrysalis. They were on 

 the road, either ujwn sand or on horse dung, solitary except in one instance, when 

 I saw two together. So intent were they usually upon their own concerns that I was 

 able to alight and approach them without much difficulty, and as I always have a 

 net at hand when travelling, I succeeded in taking four specimens in beautiful con- 

 dition. But if struck at and missed, they were alarmed and flew wildly up and 

 down the road with surprising swiftness, and frequently in and out of the wood, so 

 that it was useless to follow them. The same day, Mr. Julius Meyer, of Brooklyn, 

 was in the vicinity and observed the same comjsarative abundance of individuals 

 and their unusual gentleness and captured nine, (all males, no females being seen 

 by either of us). But for several succeeding days, although he walked repeatedly 

 over the same ground and over other roads in the neigliborliood, he was not able 

 to take a single one. They were two wary to be approached. Except in these in- 

 stances I have scarcely ever known of a perfect male being taken by any collector, for 

 the surfoco of the wings is .sensitiveto the slightest touch, and flying about the forest 

 as is tlie habit of these insects, frocjuently in furious chase of each other, the wings 

 become rubbed and broken. I doubt if a perfect sjaecimen could be found the sec- 

 ond day from chrysalis. This species is to be found here and there over a large 

 extent of tlie Southern States, but it can nowhere be common. It seems irreclaim- 

 able by civilization, and as if in process of extinction. 



I succeeded, in September 1869, in obtaining eggs from females enclosed with both 

 violets and our common iron-weed (Vernonia fasciculata) and in course of a few 

 days the larviE were duly hatched. But they could be induced to eat nothing and 

 shortly died. 



I\Ir. Hayhurst, then at Sedalia, Missouri, afterwards wrote me that he had suc- 

 ceeded in raising one larva from some of these eggs that I had sent him, until it 

 reached the second moult, when it died. This one fed on the leaves of the other 

 species of Vernonia (Noveboracensis). Mr. Meyer suggests that the difficulty in 

 raising Argynuis larviE from the egg, is owing to the dryness of the breeding boxes. 

 In a state of nature these larvae feed in the forest, on low growing plants and in 



