450 The Moths and Butterflies 



Fig. 3), native in the south, but now gradually spreading north. The 

 caterpillar, sometimes called "orange-puppy" in Florida, feeds on orange- 

 and lemon-trees, besides other plants, and is swollen in front of the middle, 

 with the anterior part of the body rusty brown with lateral stripe, the hinder 

 end of which, including two or three segments and a broad saddle in the 

 middle, is cream-yellow flecked with brown. 



A smaller widely distributed and well-known Papilio is the common 

 Eastern black swallowtail, P. polyxenes, represented by five named varie- 

 ties besides the type form. The black wings are crossed by two rows of 

 yellow spots, the inner ones the larger, and there is a series of yellow mar- 

 ginal lunules; incomplete bluish spots lie between the two yellow rows of 

 spots on the hind wings, specially distinct and large in the female. The 

 larva feeds on parsnips, caraway, etc., and is green-ringed with black and 

 spotted with yellow. P. troilus, the spice-bush swallowtail of the eastern 

 and middle states, has a single row of well-separated yellow spots near the 

 outer margin of each wing, with indications of a bluish or greenish row inside 

 this, specially distinct on the hind wings; there is an orange spot at each 

 end of this row on the hind wings. The larva lives on spicewood and sassa- 

 fras and makes a protecting nest by tying the edges of a leaf together. The 

 pipe-vine swallowtail, Laertias philenor, has no band of yellow spots, but only 

 a few indicated lilac-colored remnants of spots, and has the hind wings suf- 

 fused with beautiful glossy blue-green, especially beyond the base; its cater- 

 pillar feeds on Dutchmen's pipe and a wild species of Aristolochia, common 

 in the Appalachian forests. There are two Papilionids without tails, viz., 

 Ithobalus acauda, found in New Mexico, and I. polydantas, found in 

 Florida; both are beautiful butterflies, much like P. philenor in color and 

 marking. 



The largest family of Rhopalocera is that of the Nymphalidae, or brush- 

 footed butterflies, the vernacular name partly describing their most dis- 

 tinctive structural peculiarity, namely the marked reduction (atrophy) of 

 the fore legs to be functionless little hairy brush-like processes without tar- 

 sal claws on the feet; in both sexes these fore feet lie folded on the thorax, 

 "like a tippet," as Comstock has said. This and the possession of an always 

 five-branched radial vein in the fore wing are about the only structural 

 characteristics common to all the butterflies of this large family. The species 

 range from small to large, present a bewildering variety of coloring and pattern 

 and an equal variety of larval habit and appearance. All the chrysalids 

 are naked, usually angular, and are suspended head downward by the tail 

 without other support. Nearly 250 species of Nymphalids are recorded 

 from this -country, and the majority of the best-known and most abundant 

 butterflies in any locality belong to the group. Some systematists consider 

 the brush-footed butterflies to form several distinct families this is the 



