sal 
56 Miss M. E. Fountaine’s Descriptions of 
being suspended from a stalk of the food-plant, and was 
of a rich soft burnt-sienna, varying in tone according to 
pattern, and was in shape not unlike the pupa of a Precis, 
The imago (a ¢) emerged on February 17, after having 
remained about 12 days in pupa. 
6. Precis octavia, Cram; 7. P. archesia, Cram. ; 
and 8. P. cloantha, Cram. 
(Plate IX, figs. 6a, 6b; Ta, 7b; Plate X, figs. 8a, 8d.) 
I bred all these Precis during my stay up-country in 
Natal, in the summer of 1909. From ova laid by a 
captive 2 of P. octavia, at Dargle, I obtained about 70 
pupae, and of these, the six first to emerge (about the 
middle of March) belonged to the octavia or wet-season 
form, while all the rest were sesamus, or dry-season form. 
The food-plant is Plectranthus ecalcinus, the larva is dark- 
brown, more or less encircled with yellow stripes, it is 
spiky, with two Jong projections in front. Of P. archesia 
I bred a short series from larvae found at Jolivet, feeding 
on another kind of Plectranthus, apparently from ova laid 
by P. v. pelasgis, Godt., 2 9, as several were still busy ovi- 
positing over the same plants, from which I took the 
larvae, and P. archesia (type) was not in evidence at all; 
however, in April and early May, all I bred were of this 
last-mentioned dry-season form, with one beautiful 2 in- 
termediate between the two. ‘The larvae were black, 
finely irrorated with white, and had the usual spikes and 
frontal projections, the pupa had no gilt ornamentations 
as in P. octavia. I also obtained ova of P. cloantha, from 
a? I caught at Dargle, having by observing the wild 29 
ovipositing discovered the food-plant to be a small weed 
which grew in amongst the grass all over the veldt 
(Justicia pulegioides). I had but poor success with these 
larvae, in fact only bred six or seven out of some dozens, as 
so many died off at Donnybrook, why I do not know, unless 
it was from the intense cold which occurred there during 
my visit. The full-grown larva of this species 1s very 
handsome, head pale, bright, burnt-sienna; the underside 
and forelegs are dark-brown; it is striped throughout 
alternately with broad rich dark-brown and deep yellow- 
ochre; frontal projections much shorter than in the other 
Precis, not stiff or pectinated, but instead knobbed at the 
tip. The pupa is quite unlike any other Precis pupa I have 
