604 FIFTH REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



2. The Tawny Emperor. 

 Apatura clyton Bd. LeC. 



This butterfly is a larger and more showy one than the Eyed Empe- 

 ror and it extends farther north and east, Its habits are similar and I 

 have frequently found the larvse of both species feeding together on the 

 same tree. 



Fig. 198. — Apatura clyton: a, eggs; b, larva; c, cbrysaiis; d, 

 imago, male, the dotted line showing form of female — all natural 

 size. After Riley. 



It is less common than A. celtis and Boisduval gives Prumis as the 

 food-plantof the species; but no one since has recorded it as occurring 

 on trees of that genus, and, as I have already recorded, young larvse 

 refused to feed on Plum leaves and died rather than eat them. 



The eggs of this species are similar to those of celtis, and differ mainly 

 in being narrower on the crown, but they are " invariably deposited iu 

 dense patches of from 300 to 500, and two, or more often three, tiers 

 deep." 



The structural differences between the young larvae of the two species 

 are fully set forth in the article alluded to. 



"The larvfe are more or less gregarious up to the third molt, after 

 which they scatter. The habit, after they scatter, of hiding within 

 leaves drawn around them, is more determined than in A. celtis; and the 

 young of the second brood fall with the leaf, and hibernate huddled to- 

 gether in companies of five and upwards (Fig. 199, q). They have a 

 habit, before separating, of feeding side by side, eating the leaf from the 

 tip downward, but leaving the stouter ribs. Spinning a thread wher- 

 ever Ihey go, they often, in traveling from leaf to leaf, make quite a 

 pathway of silk ; and if the branch be suddenly jarred, they will drop 

 and hang suspended in mid-air, and, after re-assurance, climb up again 

 with the thoracic legs." 



Parasites. — My notes would indicate that there were two parasites 

 affecting the eggs of this butterfly, one of them not preserved, and re- 

 ferred to the Trichogrammida3 in my fifth Missouri report. The other, 

 since bred in numbers, proves to be a Proctotrupid belonging to the 



