NYMPHALINAE: CINCLIDIA HARRISII. 681 



lingeria and never on the other Asters, or if tliere, had not fed upon them. 

 Specimens brought to Cambridge starved rather than touch Aster (lanthe) 

 linariifolius, which Hke its food plant was formerly placed in Diplopappus. 



Habits of the caterpillar. The young caterpillars first attack the 

 a[)ical half of the leaf on which they are born devouring only the paren- 

 chyma of the under surface, and then march in company straight to the 

 summit of the plant, begin upon the tenderer leaves, and next move down 

 the plant, devouring the parenchyma of both surfaces as they go and cov- 

 ering everything with a thin web, beneath and upon which they live. 

 They continue to live in society while young, forming nests not very un- 

 like those of Euphydryas phaeton (82:8); but these nests they desert 

 before winter and hibernate probably in curled up dead leaves or beneath 

 sticks and logs. In the spring they awaken early, and although they do 

 not properly seem to live in company at this season, and spin no kind of 

 web they are rarely found alone, and generally may be discovered in 

 large numbers on Doellingeria ; sometimes twenty may be seen upon a 

 single stalk, and often four or tive upon the same leaf. This is a result 

 doubtless of their having no such proneness to stray as is the habit of Euph. 

 phaeton, for both Mr. Morrison and myself have found them in the spring 

 in the precise stations in which they had been seen the preceding autumn 

 along a road where Doellingeria was continually found. They must 

 therefore hibernate in close proximity to their birth place. When about to 

 moult, the cater j)illars leave the plant and retire to a dead stick or leaf 

 for the change, and then return to their pasture ground. 



They feed both while upon the upper and under side of the leaf, eating 

 from the edge to the midrib or sometimes gnawing irregular holes through 

 different parts of the leaf; and thus frequently stripping the plants quite 

 bare. When Doellingeria has gone to seed — in northern New England 

 about the second week of September, they have deserted their nests and 

 are nowhere to be found. Search made about the roots of the plant by 

 ]\Ir. Smith was wholly fruitless. In the spring the caterpillars devour 

 the whole plant excepting the stem and the midribs of the leaves. When 

 young and feeding in company they manifest alarm "by a jerking motion 

 of the body from side to side, the last segments being fixed to the leaf, 

 and all the larvae jerking together" (Edwards). Their behavior through- 

 out, says Mr. Edwards, "was like [that of] the larvae of nycteis, though 

 they are cleaner in feeding." They eat by day only, resting quietly by 

 night, and often Avhen disturbed, make a scraping noise by turning the head 

 half way around and scratching the mandibles forcibly and repeatedly on 

 the ribs of the leaf they are eating. 



Life history. It is single brooded and winters as a half-grown cater- 

 pillar. It appears on the wing about the middle of June,* continues to 



* Mr. Edwards tells us that transported to est by June 4. Some caterpillars which were 

 West Virginia the spring larvae developed carried through the winter there, reached ma- 

 80 as to become butterflies earlier, the earli- turity May 20. 



