PAMl'IIILIDI . AMBLYSCIRTES VIALIS. 1587 



Pupation. Wlicii the largest caterpillar began to grow uneasy, to 

 wander and refuse to eat, it was placed in a vessel with a bunch of fresh 

 and old grass, in which, after resting for a day on the side of the vessel, it 

 finally made a very slight cocoon by fastening the edges of two or three 

 adjoining blades, bringing these close together at the two ends and 

 lining the whole very thinly, indeed, but very completely with silk, which 

 in the cracks between the grass blades showed many minute openings un- 

 der the lens, and presented a reticulated appearance. Here, after resting 

 about six days, the chrysalis change occurred, apparently without any 

 cross strands of silk whatever for the body or cremaster ; the cremaster 

 was plunged into the silk on one side of the nest, but so slightly that on 

 opening the cocoon at the head end, the chrysalis slipped out. The silk 

 had a white and flocculent appearance, much like the larva before its 

 change of skin. In about eight days a pallor began to arise about the 

 wings, followed the succeeding day by a decided discoloration of the back 

 of the thorax and of the appendages ; two days later it had turned inky 

 black thi-oughout, and the following day the imago emerged, the chrysalis 

 period being about thirteen days. This was at Cambridge where the insect 

 had been reared from eggs laid in the White Mountains. 



Life history. In the north it is single brooded and apparently passes 

 the winter as a chrysalis, since the butterflies make their appearance in 

 the latter part of May, generally from the 21st to the 25th, though their 

 appearance is sometimes delayed until the first of June ; the female cer- 

 tainly appears almost as soon as the male, and specimens continue to 

 emerge from the chrysalis up to the 10th of June, judging from the con- 

 dition of specimens captured at large. It often flies until the end of June, 

 sometimes until the close of the first week in July ; but unfavorable 

 weather may put an end to the brood by the middle of June. The eggs are 

 laid at least as early as the 5th of June and hatch in about eight or nine days. 

 Further south there must be at least two broods, to judge simply from two 

 facts ; first, that the butterfly was taken in Georgia by Abbot on April 

 27, and second that caterpillars, hatched in the White Mountains in the 

 middle of June and carried to Boston, changed to chrysalis before the end 

 of July, and from the chrysalis the butterfly emerged on the 11th of Aug- 

 ust. But inasmuch as no second brood of this butterfly has been found in 

 the White Mountains in the latter part of the season, it is plain that this 

 result was reached by carrying the caterpillar to so southern a locality, 

 and indicates that in so southern a point in its range as Georgia, a second 

 brood is a regular occurrence, if indeed there be not a third. 



Behavior of the butterfly. It flies in meadows and by the roadside 

 flowers like the rest of this group of Hesperidae, although Abbot, as usual, 

 records its capture in "oak woods," the best collecting ground in the 

 south. 



