704 THE BUTTERFLIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



ble clasps and to protect an extensible finger of long hairs enclosed in a sheath ; upper 

 organ of appendages without lateral arms, small, the hook about as long as the cen- 

 trum; clasps variable, generally much as in Nymphalinae. 



Egg. Stout, truucato-fusiform, bluntly pointed at tip, with a great many longitudi- 

 nal ribs and numerous distinct, transverse, raised lines. Laid singly, or sometimes 

 (^Mechanitis t. Miiller) in small clusters. 



Caterpillar at brith. Head not larger than the thoracic segments and smooth. 

 Body cylindrical, not tapering, furnished with short tapering hairs, usually not so 

 long as the segments, arising from minute papillae, arranged on either side of the 

 body in four longitudinal rows above the spiracles, besides, on the abdominal seg- 

 ments, two rows below the spiracles. 



Mature caterpillar. Head small, well rounded, nowhere protuberant, smooth, 

 broadly and vertically banded. Body large, plump, cylindrical, naked, tapering ante- 

 riorly on the thoracic segments, banded conspicuously with numerous alternating, 

 transverse, gaily colored stripes, naked, or a few of the segments bearing erect, slen- 

 der, fleshy, laterodorsal filaments of greater or lesser length. 



Chrysalis. Generally short and very stout, rounded, with very few projections; 

 tapering very rapidly over the whole or posterior part of the abdomen to the long 

 and slender cremaster. Head scarcely produced in fi-ont, the anterior curve of the 

 body very high, the thorax and abdomen separated by a slight and broad hollowing ; 

 appendages of the head and thorax not raised in the slightest above the general curve 

 of the body. 



This subfamily is almost entirely confined to the equatorial regions of 

 America and Asia, but very few genera, poorly represented in species, 

 occurring outside these districts ; the paleogean forms belong, as a rule, 

 to distinct genera from those found in the New World, and form a group 

 apart from the neogean genera as arranged by systematists. The single 

 species described in this work, with one or two allies, form a striking 

 exception to this rule, for, although originally peculiar to the Ncav World 

 and widely distributed therein, they belong to the Old World type. In- 

 deed this is true of all the JS'orth American species. The species of 

 Euploeinae are invariably very numerous in individuals on both continents 

 and, as proved mainly by the researches of Messrs. Bates, Wallace, Fritz 

 Miiller and Trimen, are the objects of unconscious mimicry by other butter- 

 flies and by one another to an extraordinary extent. A very considerable 

 table of such mimetic forms involving many species has been given by 

 Moore (Proc. zool. soc. Lond., 1883, 207). 



These butterflies average far above the medium size and have rounded 

 and somewhat elongated wings, on which ochreous, tawny or white mark- 

 ings contrast rather vividly with dark ground colors, although the basal 

 color is not infrequently more or less orange, as in the species found in 

 North America ; the palpi and antennae are rather short, the abdomen of 

 unusual length and the legs long and stout, the perfect ones furnished only 

 with closely appressed scales ; the integument of the body is tough and 

 elastic. The male abdomen is furnished at tip with an extensile pencil 

 of long, straight hairs, first described by Herbst and Jablonsky. 



The flight of these butterflies is powerful and sustained, althougli gen- 

 erally rather slow. They often sail high in the air on expanded wing. 



