GRAPTA I. 



oive evidence in the same direction.^ It appears also that in Maine, at least in 

 the interior and beyond, only Ilarrtsu is fonnd. Professor Brami tells me that 

 neither he nor any collector known to him in the vicinity of Bangor has ever 

 taken or seen Dryas, though Harrisii is not uncommon. And he did not rec- 

 ognize examples of Dryan which I sent him. Professor Fernald, in his Butter- 

 flies of Maine, speaks of the species as two-brooded, but he writes that he is not 

 now certain of that, and has himself never known a Dryas to have been taken 

 in Maine. 



In Vol. I, I gave the food plants as Hop, Nettle, and false Nettle (Boehraeria). 

 To this I add Elm and cultivated Gooseberry, on which last plant I saw a female 

 lay an egg, 14th April, 1886. According to Mr. Scudder, Professor Packard also 

 gives Currant and Bassvvood (Tilia). But at Coalburgh the eggs are almost 

 always laid on Flop and Boehmeria, and either singly or in small clusters, more 

 or less of them in strings of from two to half a dozen or more (on one occasion, 

 a female confined in a bag over Hop laid forty-eight eggs, nearly all in strings, 

 one of nine, two of eight, one of seven, and others of less number), standing at 

 right anQ;les to the surface of the leaf. The under side of the terminal, tender 

 leaves is selected, but on Hop, the stem also. The newly hatched larva eats a 

 hole in the substance of the leaf, and during the first stage feeds about this. For 

 the first two stages it is exposed just as the larva of Inter rogationls is, but at the 

 second moult behaves differently from that species, which makes no shelter for 

 itself at any time. In August, 1882, I watched three larvtB of Comma to learn 

 at exactly what stage they began to protect themselves, placing them as soon as 

 hatched on a plant of Boehmeria set in flower-pot and in my room. Very shortly 

 after the second moult they had got to the bases of the third pair of leaves from 

 the top, two on one leaf, one on the other, and were engaged in drawing the 

 edges of the leaves, next base, down with silk spun. To effect this, they had 

 bitten off the principal rib on either side the mid-rib, very near the edge of the 

 leaf, and had also cut across to the edge. This leaf naturally curves the other 

 way, so that the caterpillars were working at a disadvantage on the convex 

 side. But notwithstanding this, they had, in course of an hour, bent down the 

 edges and bound them together for one half inch from base. Next morning all 



1 Mr. Scuddur, But. N. E. p. 338, makes this re- received a few butterflies from Rupert House, three or 



mark respecting the occurrence of Comma on Mac- four Machaon-AUaska, and one Chionobas Calais, car- 



kenzie River : " In the north, Eilwards records it from ried overland by Mr. Drexler in his note-book, and 



Fort Simpson, IMackonzie River, which is too far in from no other quarter in northern British America, 



advance of its ordinary range to be probable ; as he The Comma came from Mackenzie River. Mr. Bernard 



had butterflies from the fort of the same name on C. Ross afterwards told me, when in New York, that 



Albany River, and JennerWeir reports it from Moose the summer at Fort Simpson was hot, even if short. 



Factory near there, the more southern fort is the prob- and that melons had ripened within the walls of the 



able locality meant." To this I would say that I once fort. 



