FAMILY LYC^ENID^E (THE HAIR-STREAKS, COPPERS, AND BLUES) 



Small butterflies. The males have the first pair of legs more or less aborted, and not 

 adapted to walking. Many of the genera are brilliantly blue on the upper side of the wings, 

 others are coppery red. In Africa there are numerous genera which mimic other butterflies 

 in the form and color of their wings. The eggs are turban-shaped adorned with ridges, 

 minute eminences, and networks of raised lines. Under the microscope some of them look 

 like sea-urchins after the spines have fallen off. The caterpillars are slug-shaped, flat; and 

 while most of them feed on vegetable matter a few feed on scale-insects and aphids, and 

 some on the larvae of ants. The latter are African and Oriental forms. The chrysalids are 

 attached to the place where the caterpillar has pupated by a cincture or girdle. 



The family is very large and is represented in all parts of the world, but there are prob- 

 ably more species in the American tropics than in any other quarter of the globe, unless it be 

 in the Malaysian Archipelago and New Guinea, from which a host of species have been de- 

 scribed in recent years. 



A multitude of refinements in classification have been invented by recent authors and a 

 lot of generic names have been proposed which in this book we shall in part ignore, as they 

 are based upon such slight points that nobody but a man armed with a big microscope can 

 make them out. They puzzle common people, and this book is for laymen and not for the 

 supertechnical. 



GENUS EUM^EUS HUBNER (THE BLUE-SPOTS) 



Medium-sized or small. Dark in color, with the borders on the upper and lower sides and 

 the hind wings below beautifully adorned with spots of metallic blue or green. There are three 



