HESPERH)!: TILVNAOS LUCILIUS. 1463 



Distribution (28:2). This butterfly is apparently almost confinetl to 

 the AUeghauian fauna, where it is found from southern Canada to Maryland ; 

 it does not seem to have been taken any further inland, its westernmost 

 localities being London, Ont. (Saunders) and Schoharie, N. Y., " not at 

 all rare" (Lintner). It h;is not been taken north of the former place, nor 

 south of Maryland (Wcidemeyer, Mus. Midi. Univ.). 



I have left the above statement as I wrote it many years ago, but since 

 then it has been taken on the Yellowstone in Dakota, by Allen, and in 

 Georgia, by Morrison, so that its range is vastly extended in both direc- 

 tions, though I have no memoranda of its capture in the intervening regions, 

 where it doubtless occurs. This is the more probable, because of the slight 

 attention that is given to the collection of species of Thanaos, and because 

 of the wide distribution of the food plant of the caterpillar, Aquilegia can- 

 adensis, to which my friend, Dr. Goodale, has called my attention. This 

 plant inhabits rocky woods, practically throughout the whole of eastern North 

 America, south of Lat. 50° and east of the Rocky Mountains, though prob- 

 ably mostly confined in the southern states to elevated districts. The oc- 

 currence of the butterfly at the southern extremity of the Alleghanies and 

 at the eastern edge of northern Rocky Mountains, makes it probable that 

 it enjoys a similar range.* 



In Xew England it is apparently confined tt) the southern half, never 

 having been taken north of Massachusetts,! though here it has been cap- 

 tured on the top of the Holyoke range by several observers as well as in such 

 elevated places as Amherst (Parker), Andover and Princeton (Scudder). 

 It is also known from the vicinity of Boston, where it is common enough, 

 Springfield (Emery), Cape Cod (Sanborn) and Wood's Holl (Scudder). 

 The only New England localities are New Haven (Smith, Yale Coll. 

 Mus.), New Britain (Scudder) and Guilford, Conn. (Smythe). Although 

 found throughout most of the season, it is not so common as T. persius. 



Oviposition. The eggs are generally, say in nineteen times out of 

 twenty, laid on the under surface of the tenderer leaves of the food plant, 

 but also sometimes on the stem or on the upper side of the leaves ; they 

 hatch in alxtut ten days in June. 



Food plants. The caterpillar seems to confine its attention to a single 

 plant, the wild columbine, Aquilegia canadensis Linn., one of the Ranun- 

 culaceae, and no other species of Thanaos is known to feed on a plant any- 

 where near this. It was found on this by Saunders more than twenty years 

 ago (Can. ent., i : 100) and he sent me a description of the larva in 1872 with 

 sketches, of which I have made use. Since then, its transformations have 

 been published by Lintner. Edwards, however, tells me that he has raised 

 it in West Virginia on pig-weed, presumably Chenopodium album, a very 

 dittercnt plant. 



•If found in the Rocky Mountains, it wilj 1 1 liave, however, found a sure sign of its 



beinteresting tolearn if itfeedsonA.formosa. presence at Plymouth, N. H., in its nests. 



