660 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXIV. 



and there are often little knobs and even spine-like excrescences at the 

 junctions of the lines. As a very general rule all lyccenid eggs are laid 

 singly but there are exceptions. Amhlypodia anita, for example, and 

 LyccPMesthes emolus lays them in groups, but always side by. side, never 

 one over the other as does the papilionine Papilio demolion, race liomedon, 

 Moore. The situation chosen for oviposition varies according to the habits 

 of the species. It is generally a flower or its stalk, often a young shoot 

 and then the egg is placed in the axil of a leaf or flower-bud ; wherever it 

 is, it is nearly always well concealed. Some species are content to lay 

 on dead twigs and even on the ground on dead leaves in the vicinity of 

 the food-plant. In the case of larvae living in the interior of fruits it is 

 deposited nearly invariably on the flower before the fruit forms. The 

 species whose larvee are attended by ants are the least particular as to 

 the position and very often choose a bare leaf-surface or even the surface 

 of some foreign substance that may happen to be convenient. The ants 

 then find out where it is and seem often to visit it regularly until the 

 eclosion of the little larva which they have been seen to carry away and 

 place in some spot which, presumably, they take to be safer and better 

 for its health. Surendra quercetorum has been observed to lay its eggs 

 actually among the ants ( Cremastogaster in this particular case ) without 

 being in any way molested by them. Although the butterfly stood up high 

 on its legs during tbe process, they seemed to be quite friendly and stroked 

 its tarsi with their antennae without causing the slightest alarm. 



It would probably be possible, within somewhat broad limits, to classify 

 the Lycatnidcs a little further than has already been done above according 

 to the shape and sculpture of the egg but, for the purpose of the present 

 papers, it could not be of any interest, the number of species dealt with 

 being very small ; and the egg unknown, even, for some of them. It will 

 be described for each one, as far as information is available, further on 

 under the life histories. 



The larvae are also characteristic of the family. It is only in the 

 Erycinidce that there is anything resembling them amongst the butterflies 

 and, among the moths, there are some of the caterpillars of Limacodidce and 

 Zyycenidce which might possibly be mistaken for them. The former moth- 

 larvae can, however, be immediately recognised by the fact that they only 

 possess ventral mammellae instead of prolegs, the latter by their possessing 

 rows of dorsal warts or tubercles somewhat resembling those of the cater- 

 pillars of Aphnceus — these warts are, however, more conical in the moth-larva, 

 while in theother they are tooth-like. 



The general type of the caterpillar is like a woodlouse in shape in that 

 it is somewhat semi-circular in transverse section, broadest in the middle 

 or in front of it and tapering more or less to both ends. The head is hidden 

 under the somewhat hood-like second segment, the third segment, again, 

 is generally higher than the second and overhangs it so to speak. The tail- 

 end of the body is nearly always more or less rounded, rarely tailed as in 

 Chliaria othona where there are two, small, well-separated, tail-points. The 

 segments are well marked except those at the anal end : segments 12 to 14, 

 which are always diflicult to distinguish one from the other. These are 

 generally inclined gently in the dorsal line but, in Bindhara, Deudorix and 

 Virachola where the larvae feed in the insides of fruits, they are highly 

 sloping and together form a sort of flat, circular stopper for the hole of 

 ingress and egress and are used for cleaning out the galleries, that is, 

 ejecting the excrementaceous matter from them. The head is always 

 comparatively small for all species, the spiracles are always above the 

 dorsoventral line, the surface is generally clothed with minute hairs which 

 are often delated at the top or star-shaped ; sometimes it is practically 



