428 'IHl^^ BUTTKKFJJKS OF NEW ENCM.AND. 



those of the [)ieviou.s brood have disappeared : trom wliich one might ini'cr 

 tliat there are only two broods, the second }m)h)nged by the dihitoriuess of 

 some butterflies in laying their eggs ; but this hardly appesti-s to be the case. 

 A portion of the chrysalids of the last brood remain over \\ into- and some 

 give birth to the butterfly as late as the first week in October, The 

 butterflv may occasionally be found even to the middle of November. It 

 hibernates under stones found in piles; thus Jack (Can. ent., xvii : .")()) 

 found several under a stone fence ''two or more almost always found under 

 the same stone or near together," and Gosse (Ibid., xv : 49) found cnie 

 half torpid ''on a stone in the midst of a loose heap"; but he also had 

 one brought him from a barn-loft. 



Flight and attitudes. The butterfly has a ra))id, lively flight, not 

 unlike that of the Polygoniae. When at rest the wings are usually cither 

 tightly closed or s})read in a perfectly horizontal j)lane, the fore and hind 

 wings being so placed that the colored band of the u[)[)er surface is contin- 

 uous; sometimes, however, the wings are slightly raised or even a very 

 little depressed. The body is elevated at an angle of al)out '2(f : the 

 antennae are raised at an angle of about 25° with the body and spi-cad at 

 an angle of 1H)°, their tips being 15 mm. apart. 



When at complete rest as if in sleep, the hind legs are thrust back and 

 the middle pair widely spread, so that the body nearly or (piite touches the 

 lirouud ; the wiuii's are folded back to back, as dcsci'ibed above, and the 

 antennae are enclosed Ijctween thcin, their tips touching the costal bolder 

 of the hinder pair. 



Enemies. Although so numerous, comparatively few autuuni cater- 

 pillars pass beyond the larval state, the larger proportion falling victims to a 

 parasitic fly, Apanteles atalantae. In one instance, of twenty-five lar\ae 

 which I placed in my breeding cage, only five became chrysalids. From 

 the body of each of the others, when full grown, a number of worms emerged 

 and spun themsehes up in small, white cocoons, placed Avith perfect regu- 

 larity side by side, forming a compact bundle, usually round in foiin, made 

 up of from twenty to sixty cocoons, the whole enveloped in a cottony sid)- 

 stance (88: 13). The cocoons are in every instance spun underneath the 

 larva ; as the mass increases, the body of the exhausted larAa above it is 

 raised up from the leaf or stem on which it rested, and embraces the l)undle 

 in its curve. The larva presents us with an instance of great tenacity of 

 life ; even when every portion of its body has been honeycombed by the 

 escape of the large number of ])arasites which it had nourished — sufficient, 

 one would suppose, to produce speedy death — 'T have known its life to be 

 prolonged for a period of seven days thereafter" (Lintner, Proc. ent. soc. 

 Phil., iii : 62). These parasites, which Mr. P. S. Sprague and afterwards 

 Miss Soule unwittingly sent me in the body of their host from Wn-mont, lie 

 in the body of the caterpillar in great numbers with their heads directed 



