2l8 A YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



try to catch It; I sat perfectly still to induce it to linger as 

 long as possible. Presently it flew quietly away and I did 

 not see it return. Bits of the exquisitely blue, iridescent 

 wings of Morpho are often mounted as pendants or lockets 

 in the so-called "butterfly jewelry" and may be familiar to 

 our readers in this form. 



In places where Morpho was found we sometimes ob- 

 served the great owl butterfly, Caligo. It is a member of 

 the Brassoline subfamily of the Nymphalidae and has the 

 same geographical distribution as Morpho. It tends to fly 

 more in the twilight or in shade. The upper surface of 

 its wings (which spread from 4 to 5}^ inches in the five 

 Costa Rican species) is rich dark brown with slaty blue or buff 

 or orange. The under surface has numerous fine lines and 

 streaks of various tints of brown and of yellow and a num- 

 ber of eye-spots. The eye-spot near the middle of each hind 

 wing is the largest and is from 3^2 to Vs inch in diameter, its 

 outermost rim being black, within which is a ring of yellow. 

 It is to these two large eye-spots and their background of 

 color that these insects owe their name of owl-butterflies. 



Other conspicuous and characteristic butterflies both 

 near the laguna and down the Reventazon road, were the 

 narrow-winged Heliconiines, some members of which have 

 been described in Chapter VI. Such were Heliconius peti- 

 veranus, with black wings, crossed by a broad orange red 

 band on the fore pair, the hind ones having a narrower yel- 

 low band parallel to their front margins, and H. charithonia, 

 whose black wings bear three yellow bands on the front 

 pair, a band and two rows of small spots, on the hind ones. 

 Petiveranus has a wing-spread of 23^ inches, charithonia of 

 33^. Four charithonia were sleeping on the roots of a tree, 

 exposed by the washing away of the soil, by the roadside 

 on April 27. Their wings were folded and hanging down, 

 and so dormant were they that A. picked one of the group 



