ARGYNNIS Xr. 



and dissection showed no formed eggs, nothing but fatty masses. In 187-i, I en- 

 deavored to find out liow long after the females of the fall brood appeared, mature 

 eggs were formed. The first one was seen 16th August. On 20th, I dissected 

 three, and in all, the eggs were soft and unformed ; on 26th, they were soft, but 

 had form ; on 3d September, were firmer; on IVth, were fully mature, and a da\ 

 or two after, many were laid. So that nearly a month seemed to be required 

 for esj^srs to mature. At Coalburgh, all the larvae have gone into lethargv at once 

 on leaving the egg. But the late Mr. C. G. Siewers, of Newport, Kentucky, a 

 first-rate observer, with whom I corresponded about the peculiarities of Cyhele, 

 wrote ine, 30th October, 1877, that two eggs gave two larva?, one of wbicli fed 

 lip to and past second moult, and had gone to the base of the plant to hibernate. 

 In 1881, 28th October, he wrote that he found a larva, ten days before, under 

 rotten wood ; that it was one half inch long (wdiich would make it past third 

 moult). To see if it would feed, he trimmed a violet stock and laid it by tlie 

 larva. On 26th, he went again to the woods and found the larva, which had eaten 

 holes in two leaves and then hidden itself in a crevice so that only its spines 

 protruded. It may be, therefore, that some larvfe in West Virginia, from eggs 

 iirst laid, pass three or four stages in the fall, and so begin the next year a month 

 in advance of the main body of the species. This will account for the early 

 butterflies. But why June females have not laid eggs is not easy to conjecture. 

 Mr. Siewers wrote in 1876, that, on 24th June, he took a pair in copulation ; 

 they separated in tlie net ; he kept the female five days, and till she died, got no 

 eggs, anil found none in the abdomen. On 25th June ho caught another pair, 

 which separated after three hours, and the result was the same. 



As I have said, females are often to be seen flying late in the f;dl. and until 

 frosts destroy them. This is long after all males have disappeared. I believe 

 these females to be barren, or who have not had an opportunity to mate, and so 

 live much longer than the rest of their sex, for the females of all species of 

 butterfly die very soon after their eggs are exhausted. 



I have rarely .seen a larva of Cyhele in natural state, but on two occasions 

 found one hibernating at the top of the root of a violet plant which I had dug 

 up to set in pot for my larvre. Once, in March, I found one on under side a grass 

 leaf in a bit of sod I had taken up, and it must have spent the winter there. 

 On 16th May, 1888, a mature larva was found on the under side of a lath 

 wdiich was Ijdng on the ground. This larva died, but had it pupated, the imago 

 would have come out about 10th June. 



The caterpillars feed on every kind of wild or cultivated violet or pansy, and 

 the flowers are eaten with avidity. In moulting, the skin bursts below the head, 

 along 2 to 4, and the three pairs of legs are extricated first, the head being bent 



