82 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
prominent, somewhat hemispherical, situated at the fore-corners of 
the head. Occiput rather broad, rough, bearing some long hairs. 
Top of head as a whole slightly convex. Prothorax collar-like, a 
dark patch in centre, hind-margin convex. Mesothoracic spiracles 
dark, very conspicuous. Meso- and metanotwm variegated with 
lighter and darker tints. Legs long, slender, joints darker; femora 
and fore- and mid-tibiz ringed with darker sepia bands; fore- and 
mid-tibize hairy, hind tibia rather spiny; fore-legs about 10 mm. 
long, mid-legs about 11 mm., hind-legs nearly 16 mm. Wing-cases 
about 5 mm. long. Abdomen broad and somewhat flattened; with 
pale, long, slender, recurved mid-dorsal spines on segments six, seven 
and eight, and a small one on five hidden by the wing-cases; a pair of 
lateral spines on eight and nine, those on eight being of moderate 
length, those on nine conspicuously long, equal in length to the last 
two segments; two or four dark dots on the dorsal part of several of 
the hinder segments; also lines of paler or darker suffusions on the 
dorsal surface, which vary considerably according to the depth of 
colouring of the specimens; ventral surface of nymph-skin fairly 
uniform in colouring. Anal appendages short, hairy; wpper, tri- 
angular, pointed; laterals, shorter and more slender; lower, more 
than half as long again as upper, and flat when looked at from the 
side. It is somewhat difficult to describe the hairiness of a dried 
nymph-skin, consequently it has been little referred to. 
[Material.—(i.) A nymph-skin from which a male imago emerged 
on July 28th, 1903; (i1.) askin of a nymph, taken in Richmond Park, 
Surrey, from which a male was bred on July 10th, 1903; (iii.) other 
nymph-skins found under such conditions as to admit no doubt of 
their identity. Nos. i. and ii. were the specimens chiefly employed. 
The figure is enlarged a little over four times. ] 
THE EARLIER STAGES OF COLIAS HECLA. 
By W. G. SHeupon, F.E.S. 
So far as I am aware, the only lepidopterist who has written 
anything on the earlier stages of this beautiful Arctic species is 
Staudinger, and his brief note is in one important respect 
inaccurate. 
Staudinger, who passed the summer of 1860 in the north of 
Norway, during his sojourn there met with Colias hecla abun- 
dantly, near Bossekop, in the Alten Fjord. He states: ‘‘the 
headquarters of this species was a flat sandy peninsula in the 
bed of the River Alten”; in this place ‘“‘ Phaca lapponica, 
De Candolle, the undoubted food-plant, grew very abundantly, 
and I noticed the females ova-depositing thereon.” 
The Phaca lapponica of De Candolle is, according to the 
‘Conspectus Flore Kurope’ of Nyman, now known as Ozytropis 
lapponica, a plant which, so far as I know, does not occur at 
Bossekop ; at any rate, I carefully examined the headquarters of 
