800 THE BUTTKRFLIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



They are frisky little creatures, very fond of chasing each other through the air and 

 tumbling about -with surprising quickness of evolution. . . . After a flight [they] 

 often return like flycatchers among birds to the same spot from whence they de- 

 parted; a projecting twig, or the topmost leaf of a bush. (Gosse, Lett. Alab., 37.) 



You may see the females walking about the leaves, sunning themselves; while the 

 males are fluttering in attendance, or pertinaceously holding a tournament in honour of 

 their lady loves; in these pugnacious encounters they maul each other severely. 

 (Douglas, World of Ins., 194.) 



Wallace in writing of the South American forms says they "all fly 

 very quickly and settle upon leaves and flowers with the wings erect. 

 They have a very peculiar habit of moving the two lower wings over each 

 other in opposite directions, giving an appearance of revolving discs." 

 (Trans, ent. soc. Lond., [2] ii : 263.) This habit is found in several, 

 perhaps all, of our genera. 



The group is about equally represented in the Old and New Worlds ; 

 the same is true of the north temperate zones considered apart ; only 

 one of the six New England genera, hovv'ever, is common to both hem- 

 ispheres, and yet the tropics of the New World nourish the vast major- 

 ity of the species most closely allied to those of Europe and North 

 America. 



The eggs are echinoid shaped, studded with numerous projections, con- 

 nected by radiating ridges ; they are laid singly. The larvae feed on 

 trees and shrubs rather than on herbaceous plants, and do not differ 

 greatly from those of the other tribes, though they are generally flatter and 

 more slender ; depressoscutatae was the descriptive term applied to them 

 by Denis and Schiffermuller. 



Rosaceae, Leguminosae, Ericaceae and Cupuliferae seem to be more fre- 

 quently chosen for food than other plants ; several species are known 

 to bore into and devour the interior of fruits, the first case known being 

 up to the present time the most remarkable ; in this, the pomegranate is the 

 fruit attacked, and several of them inhabit a single fruit, living in the inte- 

 rior ; when they find the fruit weakening, they eat a hole to the surface a 

 quarter of an inch in diameter (having entered when much smaller) , secure 

 the stem of the fruit to the branch by silken cords and return to the fruit, 

 where they undergo their transformations, the butterflies escaping pre- 

 sumably with moist wings by the same hole (Westwood, Trans, ent. soc. 

 Lond., ii : l-X, pi. 1 ). 



The clirysalid.s, too, are similar to those of the other groups but stouter. 

 The insects are nearly all single brooded and pass the winter either in the 

 egg or chrvsalis ; the single brooded species which hibernate as chrysalids 

 are among the earliest of our butterflies and complete their annual cycle 

 before the middle of July — even much earlier in the south, and yet the 

 intense summer heat has no power to rouse the chrysalids from the deep 

 sleep in which they remain three-fourths of the year. 



