154 THE BUTTERFLIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



Fyles has recently raised the insect to maturity on Carex oligosperma. I 

 find it takes readily to lawn grass. 



Oviposition and larval habits. Holmgren secured eggs from impris- 

 oned females which were laid indiscriminatingly on cloudberry, grass, 

 lichens, and the walls and lid of the enclosure. Braun's similar experi- 

 ment in Bangor resulted in only three or four eggs laid on the netting. 

 Fletcher obtained e^^is on netting; on a female confined over grass. Holm- 

 gren's eggs hatched in 19 days, and Berg's in 16 ; those sent me by Mr. 

 Braun in 14 days, Fyles' in 14, and Fletcher's in from 14 to 18 days. 

 The young larva, according to Holmgren, is very sluggish, after the 

 manner of satyrids, and it is from 7-9 days before the first moult occurs, 

 but Fyles gives only five days for his Canadian specimens ; mine on the 

 contrary, received from Mr. Fletclier, ])assed nearly three weeks in the first 

 stage, and Fletcher had the same experience with his. Fyles says it feeds 

 at first head downwards on the edge of the blade, afterwards bites off the 

 end of a blade, and thereafter feeds head upward from the bitten end, 

 gradually retreating down the shortened blade ; but one of mine, from 

 cggti received from Mr. Fletcher, ate at the start head upward from the tip 

 of a broken blade. It feeds while young both by day and by night. 



Life history. I am mainly indebted to Mr. Braun for information 

 concerning the seasons of this insect with us, which is single brooded, and, 

 in his experience, first appears near Bangor in the last week of May and 

 files for about a month. The earliest one he has taken was caught May 

 22 ; the females appear about a week after the advent of the males and 

 fiy a little longer or until June 22, the butterfly living about three 

 weeks. Eggs have been obtained by him June 13 and June 22. About 

 (Quebec they are said to appear from May 31 to June 15 by Fyles, who 

 obtained eggs on June 17. Mr. Fletcher at Ottawa obtained eggs July 

 3. In Labrador Moschler says they are found in June and July. In 

 Sweden they began to fly one year in considerable numbers, according to 

 Holmgren, on June 12, females were first taken on the 14th and by July 3 

 only females were to be found and these outflown ; males had disappeared 

 by June 2C), and eggs were obtained June 30 to the number of ninety from 

 four females. Berg, at Riga, obtained an egg laid on June 9. 



In Europe, according to Holmgren, the caterpillar moults twice before 

 winter, when it goes into hibernation and completes its transformations in 

 the spring ; but in Canada, according to Fyles, the only one who has carried 

 it to maturity, it moults four or five times before hibernation, and scarcely 

 feeds more in the spring, changing to chrysalis A^iril 21 ; hoAv long the 

 chrysalis period lasts he does not state. From observations the present 

 season I find that in changing its skin the first time the little caterpillar is 

 motionless for at least three days. 



The male while living possesses no odor perceptible to the human senses 

 from the discal streak of androconia on the front wing. 



