394 Dr. T. A. Chapman on the 



to tempt them to oviposit and by way of flowers for food, 

 they refused to lay except accidentally on any plant but the 

 food-plant {Astragalus alpinus), Phaca frigid a and common 

 red clover. The Astragalus was preferred, but clover was 

 well patronised. Except a very few on flowers of the 

 Astragalus, all the eggs were laid on the leaves and green 

 petioles of the plants, apparently indifferently as to upper 

 or under surface ; but this was of course in confinement. 



My attempts to rear the larvae might have had no more 

 success than Mr. St. Quintin's, as the Astragalus, though 

 it keeps alive, fails under the ill-usage of being brought to 

 England to provide an adequate supply of pabulum, but 

 that it so happened, that in view of this danger I tried 

 my larvae with clover and various other plants, and found, 

 that though they refused all my other offerings, they took 

 to the leaves of Colutea arborescens quite as readily as to 

 their proper fodder. 



I may observe here, that the amyrmecophilous larvae of 

 V. optilete and of C. orhitulus have eccentric food-plants, 

 Ericaceae and Primulaceae, but that A. i^heretes is 

 more normal to the group it belongs to in having Papilio- 

 naceous food-plants, and is also more normal in possessing 

 a honey-gland. 



The egg is about 0"60 mm. wide and 0'30 mm. high, rather flat 

 above and below, the sides almost a semicircle in vertical section, 

 but a little more rounded above than below. The colour is white, 

 modified by green when fresh so far as the bases of the cells of 

 the covering are seen, therefore (when the egg is new) always 

 with a green tone as one looks down the nearest cells. Towards the 

 top the cells are very deep, deeper than wide, and of a very honey- 

 comb aspect, being sometimes arranged hexagonally; in other places 

 they are square, as many as thirty-five together may be found 

 arranged as squares towards the sides, where however they are 

 shallower and the knobs at the angles more prominent. 



The cells are about "025 mm. across, and the white material has a 

 solid look as if carved out of ivory. The depth of the cells is such 

 that in some empty egg-shells the shell proper is eaten away by the 

 escaping larva, beneath a width of several cells, whose walls are left 

 as an open network. 



The micropylar area is in a deep hollow, owing to the high walls 

 of the surrounding cells, and is about 0'03 mm. across. The cells 

 are very small, a third of the diameter of the general cells and all 

 nearly round, with no definite " rosette." 



