on the Bionomics of Southern Nigerian Insects. 399 
Scotland. I have a milch goat, a somewhat perverse 
animal. One afternoon it cried so very persistently that 
I went outside to see what could be wrong. I could find 
no evidence of anything but perversity, and was really 
feeling most annoyed, when I suddenly saw a Catochrysops- 
like Lycaenid deliberately oviposit (1 felt quite sure about 
it) on a weed in my compound—a Labiate ! [Solenostemon 
ocymoides Schum, and Thonn.| The plant is the one 
from which Lamborn bred Precis octavia. It is an almost 
scentless plant. I knew of Ocomum viride, the so-called 
mosquito-plant, and had looked at it for Lycaenid ova, 
but without success. O. viride is a W. African plant (it 
yields thymol) the scent of which was supposed to be a 
mosquitifuge. It is commonly found in native villages. 
It doesn’t seem to have entered the minds of those who 
boomed this plant as a terror to the mosquito, that the 
absence of mosquitoes from villages where the plant grew 
(if indeed they are ever absent) might equally well be due 
to the normal so-called ‘“‘ bouquet d’Afrique,’ which at 
times takes forms that might knock out the stoutest 
mosquito. 
I do not know if the Lycaenid I’ve got is phasma, for I 
have kept no type. [It is phasma.] Anyhow it is just as 
well, for it gives me no bias. The egg is most cunningly 
placed inside the small flower on the lower lip of the corolla. 
For a Lycaenid egg it is quite large and of a pale blue 
colour. I have just looked at the first set of inflorescences 
on which the specimen caught on the 5th (it was Bank 
Holiday) oviposited. I only found two ova and those with 
difficulty, for the swollen nectaries, which secrete at a 
great rate even when the flower is cut, are rather like the 
ova, and I think I must have overlooked some, for I now 
find there are about half a dozen unmistakably Lycaenid 
larvae, tiny little things and rather bristly, one of a yellowish 
colour, the others red-purple like the flowers. I wonder 
if I'll be able to do anything with them before I have to sail. 
Of course they may not be phasma, but I think, if the 
Lycaenid completed its whole existence on the plant, that 
Lamborn would have found them, Plants are difficult 
to dry at this time of the year, but I'll send a specimen in 
spirit for you to send to Kew. I am also to send the 
Loranthus. {Both sent on the following day, Aug. 12.] 
[Dr. O. Stapf of Kew informs me that Solenostemon 
ocymoides ranges from Senegal to the Congo. It is very 
