680 THE BUTTERFLIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



In New England, like Charidryas nycteis, it is found in distant and 

 very various localities. In Maine it has been found at Orono (Fer- 

 nald), Bi-unswick (Fish), Portland (Lyman) and abundantly in Norway 

 (Smith). In New Hampshire it is plentiful at the White Mountains and 

 has also been taken at Pittsfield (Treat), Dublin (Faxon) and at Milford, 

 where it is "rare and local" (Whitney). In Vermont it is recorded only 

 from Montpelier (Sprague) and Stow, "very abundant" (Miss Soule) ; 

 and in Massachusetts from West Roxbury "a single specimen" (Minot), 

 Maiden (Sprague), Sutton (Harris), Princeton (Scudder) and Spring- 

 field "rare" (Emery, Dimmock). South of Massachusetts it is not 

 known. It seems, therefore, to be more common in the elevated and 

 northern districts, and to belong more strictly to the Canadian than the 

 Alleghanian fauna. On the road from Fabyans to the base of Mount 

 Washington, where one rises 1000' in a distance of six miles, I noticed in 

 the early part of August that though Doellingeria grew as abundantly on 

 the upper as on the lower half of the road, as marked by the Twin lliver 

 Farm, nests and caterpillars were only to be found on the lower half. 

 This would indicate either that it is either extremely local or that it does 

 not readily attain a higher altitude in that region than about 2200'. 



Oviposition. The eggs are laid in patches of twenty or upwards ap- 

 parently only in a closely crowded single layer, upon the middle of one 

 side of the under surface of the food plant, a leaf about half way up the 

 plant being chosen. In one case, in confinement, an unimpregnated fe- 

 male, about a week or ten days out of chrysalis, laid on the side of a tube 

 from which she was sipping eau siicre, a mass of about sixty eggs some- 

 what pell-mell, but the bottom ones in a pretty solid layer. She api)eared 

 to be too intoxicated or exhausted to lay more, fell to the ground and died 

 before morning, her body still crammed with eggs. 



Food plant. The caterpillar feeds exclusively upon one of the Com- 

 positae. Aster (Doellingeria) umbellatus Torr.-Gray. Prof. S. I. Smith, 

 who was the first to discover the early stages, has also found it on Che- 

 lone glabra L. and another Aster, but it was not seen to feed upon either, 

 and in confinement ate only the Doellingeria. Mr. Edwards gave larvae, 

 sent to him to West Virginia, leaves of Chelone, "but so long as the least 

 bit of the dry leaf of Diplopappus [Doellingeria] on which they hatched 

 remained, the larvae declined the Chelone, and then after star^ing many 

 hours they attacked it vigorously. . . .The first moult was passed and the 

 larvae now utterly refused Chelone. I gave them Aster and on this they 

 fed readily to the last, eating any species indifferently." With three spe- 

 cies of Aster growing abundantly e^•ery where along the roadside at the 

 White Mountains in the spring, in company with Doellingeria, one or 

 two of which it took me some time to learn always to distinguish, the 

 catcr])illars found on a hundred different plants were always on the Doel- 



