350 Mr. C. F. M. Swynnerton on Carnivorous Insects. 



Charaxes) do not attain their lull coloration for a day or 

 two after laying, and they darken again when approaching 

 hatching. Yet even here something may be done ; for I 

 have found (my observations here being confined, how- 

 ever, to species of the three genera Pseudacraea, Charaxes 

 and Pajpilio) that a gravid female at death usually con- 

 tains one fertile unlaid egg, and that this egg, but not the 

 others, goes through its colour-changes within the parent's 

 body (or if extracted from it) just as it would have done 

 after laying, and ends (if the parent's drying be not too 

 rapid) in actually hatching therein. I have taken a live 

 larva, half out of its shell, from the body of a long-dead 

 Pseudacraea lucretia var. expansa, and it has fed freely 

 when placed on Chrysophyllum fulvum (its food-plant in 

 the Chirinda forest) and has quickly proceeded to cover 

 itself in the normal manner with its own frass. 



The one fertile egg has of course another obvious applica- 

 tion. It may enable us to study the life-history of an 

 insect that has proved refractory about laying. I have 

 bred Papilio dardanus from such eggs, and the Pseudacraea 

 larva referred to above was already more than a week old 

 and strong and vigorous when it was unluckily accident- 

 ally killed. I have, I believe, t^vice obtained more than 

 one such egg (in each case from a dead P. dardanus $ 

 f. hippocoon) as against more than thirty instances in 

 which there was only one. 



[For Mr. Swynnerton's further notes on the eggs of 

 butterflies see Supplement, p. 428. — E. B. P.] 



