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on the Bionomics of Southern Nigerian Insects. 345 
a Hewitsonia settling on the aerial rootlets of the Ficus 
on several successive nights lately. The EHpitola honorius 
larvae are also, I am sure, of the same kind, and indeed 
their shape is exactly that of the Hewitsonia larvae, though 
their colour is brown, a snuff-coloured brown with plenty of 
hairs, giving them a moth-larva-look. The Hewitsonia and 
E. pitola larvae are also alike in being rather broader ante- 
riorly—with a square-shouldered sort of shape, as it were— 
than posteriorly. This is not quite so marked as in the 
Teratoneura larvae, but, now that I know a little about 
them, I would have no hesitation in associating them with 
Lycaenidae, and with each other among the Lycaenidae, 
if I saw them on ant-infested bark, the ants being C7ve- 
mastogasier. The little Lycaenid [E'pitola concepcion Suff. | 
that I sent, with the hairy larva and Hewitsonia-like pupa, 
is, I am certain, of the same order, as also is Lridopsis. 
I found at least three other larvae among ants of the 
same type last tour in travelling through a forest district, 
but couldn’t do anything with them, as they were too 
young. I do wish I could get a month’s holiday in a 
forest district, and I’m nearly sure I could work out as 
many of this type as Lamborn did of the others. It is 
rank bad luck being here for such work. I am .very 
curious to know the systematic position with regard to 
each other of those I have just mentioned. Are they 
really closely related or is it a case of convergence? [They 
are certainly nearly related.|| I have an idea in my own 
mind that this group of Lycaenids in a sense correspond 
to certain xerophytes of the plant world. A desert plant 
if put into competition with ordinary trophophytes and 
left to make the best of it is choked out by its better 
adapted rivals and perishes in the midst’ of plenty. In 
the desert it thrives in apparently starvation conditions, 
but the little there is is enough for the few that can stand 
the conditions. We can hardly imagine even Germany 
making war on the Eskimos, to use another analogy. It 
may be so with this group. What with poor fare and 
the ants, probably few insects would care to invade their 
field. One could imagine Satyrines being left to starve 
through an invasion of Army worm or Locusts. 
Dec. 29, 1917.—The hairy, “ eremobiotic”’ types, that 
live in a desert of ants, neither tolerated nor attacked but 
simply ignored, giving nothing and taking nothing of any 
consequence to the ants, though securing indirect pro- 
