1524 THE BUTTERFLIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



Haunts and abundance. Abbot says it is to be found about 

 gardens and fields and among melon blossoms ; he also adds that it fre- 

 quents corn fields, near oak woods, but he seems to have found nearly 

 everything in or near oak woods. Eldwards says he has ol'ten observed it 

 about melon and cucumber patches, alighting on the leaves, audit is about 

 manured grounds, not very carefully cared for, that Chenopodium 

 best flourishes. Dr. Merrill usually found them in fields of white clover. 



Edwards says it "is somewhat abundant in some years" in West Vir- 

 ginia ; and Mr. Lintner that it only appeared a few years ago about 

 Albany, a single specimen being taken in 1876 ; but that three years later 

 it was one of the commonest butterflies. It is invariably abundant in 

 Missouri. 



Oviposition. Edwards says that "the egg is laid singly on the upper 

 side of a leaf, sometimes near the edge, but genei'ally near to the mid- 

 rib" ; those I have seen were laid near the middle of the upper surface of 

 leaves, but not on the midrib, and Mr. Riley writes that they are always 

 on the upper surface. Mr. Edwards adds that he has "often found several 

 eggs on a stunted plant not more than two or three inches high growing 

 on the gravel walk." The duration of the egg state, according to 



O CO ' D 



Edwards, is about five days. 



Food plants. The proper food of this caterpillar appears to be species 

 of the allied families, Chenopodiaceae and Amarantaceae. Miss Murtfeldt 

 finds it easily at any time on Chenopodium album, which is doubtless what 

 is meant by Abbot when he gives "lamb's quarters" as one of its food 

 plants ; I suspect it is this plant also which Edwards considers its food 

 when he specifies "pigweed," that being one of the common names of 

 Chenopodium album, although Edwards himself adds the generic name of 

 quite a different plant — Ambrosia, one of the Compositae. I have also 

 reared it on Chenopodium. Miss Murtfeldt tolls me that it also feeds upon 

 Amarantus albus, and Mr. S. Lowell Elliot writes that it will feed on 

 any of the wild species of the Amaranth family. Perhaps it is to one of 

 these two families that are to be referred the unknown plants, "common 

 and i-ed careless," to which Abbot also refers as food plants. Abbot also 

 gives two other plants of the Labiatae, the horse mint, Monarda punctata, 

 upon which he figures it, and wild marjoram, Origanum vulgare. I could 

 not persuade it to eat Monarda fistulosa, belonging to a different section of 

 the genus. 



Habits of the caterpillar. Miss Murtfeldt writes that "when very 

 young the larvae have not the necessity for, nor the power of forming a 

 case the full size of the leaf. The first covering, therefore, that they pro- 

 vide for themselves is made by partly cutting out, folding over and fasten- 

 ing down a small portion of the edge of the leaf and when this habitation 

 becomes too small, they forsake it and form another in the same manner, 



