1586 THE BUTTERFLIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



hilly parts of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, as at Milford in the 

 former state (Whitney) and in the latter at Amherst where it is common 

 (Parker, Morrison) and Mount Toby (Sprague) : probably, therefore, 

 it will be found throughout the southern half of the state in proper locali- 

 ties, for it has been taken at Springfield (Emery, Dimmock) and about 

 Boston (Minot, Faxon) and is common enough in Connecticut (Norton, 

 Scudder, Smith, Verrill). 



Oviposition. The eggs of this butterfly are laid freely on grass ; some 

 laid on the 5th and 6th of June emerged on the 16th and 17th ; others 

 laid by the same female on the 9th and 10th were bitten at the top by the 

 enclosed caterpillar on the 20th and most of them emerged by the 2l8t, 

 the remainder on the following da}"^. 



Habits of caterpillar. The caterpillar feeds readily on comtnon grass. 

 Eggs were laid for Mr. Fletcher and myself on Avena striata and the 

 caterpillars were partly raised by him on Poa pratensis. On emerging 

 from the egg they eat the whole or nearly the whole of their forsaken shell. 

 "As soon iis they were placed on a tuft of Poa pratensis they crawled up 

 to the tip of a blade and made a tent by drawing the opposite sides half 

 way together with one strong strand of silk. Here they remained about 

 five days, eating a little from the edge of the leaf (Fletcher). A little 

 later, and during its first and second larval stages it fastens together the 

 opposite edges of a blade of grass by about a dozen strands of silk, tight- 

 ening them gradually until a sort of tube is formed and it becomes difficult 

 to see within through the crack. Later in life, and especially when about 

 to change its skin and desiring greater concealment, it constructs a nest 

 by doubling a leaf back upon itself and sewing the sides together, or by 

 stitching together three or four contiguous blades into a tube, lining the 

 floor with a dense coating of silk. When more than half grown it not in- 

 frequently comes out of its nest, when the flocculent covering has fairly 

 developed, and rests stretched at full length on a blade of grass, its head 

 thrown back so that the face is dorsal. In no other Hesperian have I 

 seen any such tendency to exposure, which Mr. de Niceville tells me is con- 

 stant in the Indian Gangara thyrsis in v/hich the flocculence is extremely 

 developed. Mr. Fletcher, as already stated, has since noted the same thing 

 in Pamphila mandan . Our caterpillar seems excessively delicate ; its skin 

 apart from the flocculence permits all the internal organs to be seen and, 

 especially in the latter part of its life, it is exceedingly sluggish and want- 

 ing in spirit. Its development is slow. The eggs, as we have seen, 

 hatch in from eight to eleven days, the first stage lasts only three or four 

 days, but the succeeding stages much longer, so that it is at least a month 

 after this, sometimes five weeks, before the caterpillar has stopped feeding ; 

 it is then about ten days before the change to chrysalis takes place ; this 

 lasts about thirteen days, so that from egg laying to butterfly requires 

 about seventy days. 



