1322 THE BUTTERFLIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



Prunus serotina Elu-hart, and Mr. Riley has taken it on the peach, 

 Primus persica, and the choke cherry, Pirus arbutifolia, in Missouri, 

 all Rosaceae. Besides these polypetalous plants it lias been found in one 

 or two instances upon gamopetaloue plants such as the lilac, Syringa vul- 

 garis, one of the Oleaceac, and also in a single instance by Mr. Riley on 

 sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas, one of the Convolvulaceae, but he himself 

 doubts whether it feeds upon that plant. The most remai'kable of all, 

 however, is, according to Riley, its capture by Mr. Monell in Missouri upon 

 Junipcrus sabiniana, a coniferous tree. 



Habits and habitation of the caterpillar. When it first comes from 

 the egg the young larva, after devouring its egg shell, bits a channel down 

 one side of the leaf on which it was born , about a centimetre or a centi- 

 metre and a half from the tip, straight or a little obliquely to the midrib, 

 then folds over the flap thus obtained upon the upper surface of the opposite 

 side and lives in the depth of the concealment thus formed (82 : 5) : no 

 silken threads fasten the edges together,* yet the edge of the flap is pressed 

 firmly upon the opposite side, solely by the repeated crossings next the 

 midrib of transverse strands of sUk, so as to form a dense, glistening, whitish 

 carpet covering a width of about seven millimetres, but thickest in the mid- 

 dle and extending the whole length of the enclosure made. If forced open 

 by hand, the flajD at once regains its former position when freed, showing 

 the tenseness of the silken strain. The deepest part of the nest is some- 

 what cylindrical, so that an opening of about three millimetres in diameter 

 is found at the end away from the tip of the leaf, through which tiie larva 

 finds ample room to creep even after it has passed its first moult, whicli it 

 does in this chamber. I have found them in such a nest even up to 

 the beginning of the third stage. It is by no means rare to find such nests 

 with the leaf cut in a channel down to the midrib on both sides, as if it 

 had been difficult, with one channel only, to draw the two sides of the leaf 

 together. It feeds upon the same leaf, gnawing great holes out of the 

 sides of the leaf, but before this is nearly consumed it passes to a new leaf 

 to renew its operations. Being now larger and stronger it makes its nest 

 in a different way, without first preparing a flap. By the same method of 

 weaving the sOken floor of its proposed abode, and by forming its track far 

 to one side of the middle of one half of the leaf, it folds over upon itself 

 one side of the leaf so as to make the edge fall upon the upper surface of 

 the leaf upon the same side of the midrib, and generally, though not 

 always, on the apical rather than the basal portion of the leaf, and so constructs 

 a long and rather narrow, flattened cylinder, in which the edge of the leaf 

 is in every part closely appressed to the surface, and out of wliich it can 

 crawl at either end. From this retreat it passes at will to feed upon the 



•Edwards says (Can. eut, xvi:115) that "stitching it closely," but this is certainly a 

 the young caterpillar folds a bit of the leaf mistake. 



