OF BUTTERFLIES 111 



The tiarate eggs are very beautiful objects, often 

 reminding one of a miniature sea-urchin without 

 spines, and are characteristic of the Lycaenidae, 

 though some of them inchne toward the hemispher- 

 ical form, and all, without exception, are reticu- 

 late. In these the surface is never ribbed, but 

 generally covered with a heavy network of deep 

 pits, whose bounding walls are rather coarse and 

 rough. The eggs of the * Parnassians resemble 

 them closely. 



Finally the hemispherical eggs, generally more 

 than half as high as broad, and with a slight flat- 

 tened summit, are smooth, and comprise only the 

 Pamphilini, if we except the reticulated Heodes, 

 which possibly belongs here as much as with the 

 turban-shaped eggs. 



As an architectural form, the egg of a butterfly 

 is exquisitely patterned. With all the variation in 

 sculpture and contour, every curve and every detail 

 of chiseling is in subordination to a central fea- 

 ture — all lead up to a distinct culminating area, 

 the micropyle, or little rosette of cells of the most 

 exquisite delicacy, which crowns the sunmiit of the 

 central vertical axis. Often requiring some of 

 the higher powers of the microscope to discern, the 

 cells are arranged in such definite and regular pat- 



