300 THE BUTTERFLIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



"It frequently assembled in astonishing numbers round old lumbering camps etc. , 

 congregating about the tea-leaves and other refuse lying about such places. On the 

 15th of July, on the site of a lumbering camp and timber rolhvay, on the bank of the 

 Rouge, about three miles above the Indian Village in the township of Arundel, I saw 

 the most extraordinary assemblage of butterflies I ever beheld, several hundreds of 

 this species being congregated together in groups consisting of from twenty to fifty 

 individuals in each, whilst many others flew around and rendered it difticult to arrive 

 at an accurate estimate of their numbers; nevertheless, I am convinced that I am 

 within the mark, when I state that there were more than three hundred assembled 

 within a space of a few square yards." (Can. nat., v : 89.) 



It is one of the delights of camp life in northern New England to meet 

 this butterfly. 



Oviposition. The eggs are laid singly, close to the tip and upon the 

 upper surface of the finely tapering leaves of the food plant, so near the 

 tip that the egg is just about as wide as the leaf at that point. They are 

 laid almost exclusively upon horizontally extended branches of small plants, 

 not more than two or three feet high, skirting roadsides. As abraded and 

 ragged females may be found for a long time, it is highly probable that 

 only a few eggs are laid in a single day, and that the mother continues her 

 labors for several weeks. The eggs hatch, according to Edwards and 

 Mead, in from seven to nine days. 



Food plants. The plants credited with being the food of this species in 

 the larval state are various and very different from each other, but some of 

 them seem to require confirmation. I have myself found the caterpillar in 

 the White Mountains exclusively upon black and yellow birch and willoAv 

 (once upon poplar), belonging to neighboring families of plants, Betula- 

 ceae and Salicaceae ; and I regard the first, Betula lenta, as its proper food 

 by preference. Mr. Edwards has found it in the Catskills on aspens (Pop- 

 ulus), a very closely allied plant, Lintner reared it on Populus balsami- 

 fera, and Gosse says he took the caterpillar "from an elm tree, on the leaves 

 of which it was feeding," also a neighboring plant ; all the above are apet- 

 alous plants. But Boss mentions honeysuckle* (Caprifoliaceae, a gamo- 

 petalous plant) as one of its foods, which surely needs verification ; Mr. 

 Saunders recoi'ds the capture of a larva while beating some thorn bushes 

 in London, Ontario, and Colonel Higginson has raised it from hawthorn in 

 Brattleboro ; Avhile I found one last autumn making its hibernaculum on 

 Amelanchier, another of the Rosaceae, to do which it was necessary that 

 it should at least bite the leaves. Miss Middleton and Professor French 

 of Illinois, state that it feeds on basswood (Tilia), a statement accepted by 

 Edwards ; all of these are polypetalous plants, very far removed from what 

 seems to be its j)roper food. 



Habits of the caterpillar. The young caterpillar, according to Mead, 

 acts like the other members of the genus in that it remains at "the tip of 



*Is it possible that under this name Ross and lias mistaken Amelanchier for that 

 .•efers to Lonicera, also called honeysuckle, plant? 



