1622 THE BUTTKHFLIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



preserved in the British Museum. It is found, however, rather abun- 

 dantly within the Canadian fauna and, in most of the settled parts of 

 Canada, is the commonest of the Hesperidae from Nova Scotia to Western 

 Ontario. The northernmost localities from which it is known, passing 

 from east westward, are Nova Scotia (Jones), Quebec (Bowles), Compton 

 (Gosse), Montreal (Couper, Caulfield), Ottawa (Billings, Fletcher), 

 Sudbury (Fletcher), Nepigon (Fletcher, Scudder), and Calgary (Geddes). 

 In the west it has a wider latitudinal extension, from the last named point 

 to Nebraska (Carpenter), Kansas (Snow), Colorado at Ute Pass and 

 Englemann's Caiion (Snow), New Mexico (Snow), and Dallas, Texas 

 (Boll). Butler gives it from Costa Rica!, but certainly by mistaken 

 identification. 



Of course it is found throughout New England, in the southern parts 

 of which it is exceedingly abundant ; it is even common in such northern 

 and elevated localities as Williamstown, Mass. (Scudder), Thornton 

 (Faxon) and Plymouth, N. H. (Scudder), Norway (Smith) and "Water- 

 ville. Me. (Hamlin) ; but there seems to be no record of its occurrence 

 among the White Mountiiins, where, however, it presumably occurs. 



The dark form of the female, A. z. pocahontas, never quite so abun- 

 dant as the normal female, has a range of neai'ly equal extent ; specimens 

 are in the Museum of Comparative Zoology from Maryland, which seems 

 to be its southern limit, and it is reported from London, Ontario (Saun- 

 ders), Ottawa (Billings), and Montreal (Couper), but not from 

 Quebec or Nova Scotia, nor has it been taken in the northern half of New 

 England, except at Poi-tland, Me. (Lyman) — or indeed north of 43° 15' 

 N. Lat. ; apparently it increases in abundance southwardly. 



Oviposition. Eggs are laid freely in confinement on grass. They 

 hatch in from eleven to thirteen days. 



Habits and food of the caterpillar. The caterpillar on escaping 

 from the egg devours first the micropyle and in one instance, after eating 

 it, the creature remained four days longer in the shell before making a 

 larger hole ; it is always a long while in making its exit, for, as another 

 instance, may be mentioned one which, twenty-four hours after it had eaten 

 a hole nearly as large as its head, was still in the egg though it had now 

 devoured about two-thirds of it ; another, which was observed to have 

 merely taken three or four bites early one afternoon, on the next morning 

 had only completed a hole as large as its head ; in this last instance, how- 

 ever, every fragment of shell (or at least of the vertical walls) had dis- 

 appeared in another hour. 



The caterpillar feeds upon common grass, "stationing itself about the 

 inside of the leaves near the joints, drawing portions of the leaves together 

 with silken threads, forming a rude case in which it secretes itself. When 

 placed on a strong ribbed blade, the edges of which it cannot bend, it spins 



