1094 TIIK BUTTERFLIES OF NEW ENGLAXD. 



in very scanty numbers, and to the middle or end of .Inly ; immediately 

 thereafter, or early in August, generally from the 2d to the 5th, a new 

 brood appears which is much more numerous, sometimes tolerably com- 

 mon, and butterflies continue to emerge from the chrysalis, judging by the 

 capture of perfectly fresh specimens, well into September and to fly 

 throughout the month. No October captures have been noted. The eggs 

 are laid certainly as late as August 18-20, when Miss Eliot obtained them, 

 and I have had females with fully developed eggs none of which had been 

 laid, as late as September 9. The eggs hatch in about six days and the 

 caterpillars are full fed in about a month from the time the eggs are laid. 

 And now follows the strange part of the procedure at the north. All my 

 chrysalids in the autumn of 1888, which entered that state between the 

 17th and 22d of September, and were kept in an unheated room adjoining 

 a very large one heated only by an open wood fire, and where the win- 

 dows were kept open night and day, gave out imagos ; the first change of 

 coloration was noticed between October 11 and 15, and in this condition 

 of pai'tial readiness they remained from seven to thirteen days, and finally 

 emerged October 18-27 after from thirty to thirty-eight days in the chrys- 

 alis. Of course this is not normal, but the conditions of temperature 

 must have been very slighth' difl^erent from what they woidd hii\c had in 

 the open air. Of two specimens which changed to chrysalis in the night 

 of September 18-19, one emerged October 21 ; the other was sent to Mr. 

 Fletcher in Ottawa, and reached perfect maturity on November 4, but 

 failed to emerge. This appears to me to be an attempt in the north to 

 simulate the third brood in the south, but it scarcely seems possible that 

 the earliest produce of the second brood can reach maturity in season out 

 of doors to give birth to imagos before such cold and frosty nights would 

 come as would kill the newly emerged butterflies. Still it would appear 

 that it is probably by this small chance of life that the buttei"fly maintains 

 its foothold in the warmer nooks of New England. 



Flight and postures. Its flight is much more vigorous than one would 

 anticipate from its appearance, but is after all feeble and timid, as becomes 

 such a weak winged creature. It has none of the hurried zigzag move- 

 ment of Eurymus, and flies but short distances at a time close to the 

 ground. It will fly in the windiest and most heavily clouded weather. 



When alighted but alert, the wings are closed, the front pair erect, their 

 costal edges at scarcely less than a right angle with the axis of the body, 

 the antennae arcuate and extended on a general ])lanc with the body, the 

 club drooping, and divaricate about 80°. 



When at complete rest, the fore wings are dropped back so as to bring 

 the costal edges of all the wings nearly parallel except at tip, the costal 

 edge of the hind wings exactly fitting, at base, the lower edge of the costal 

 vein of the fore wings ; tlie antennae are held as above, i)ut only divaricate 



