24 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XI. 



outside our cages, on a cow-dropping in a dark place in evergreen 

 jungle ; it is probably a dusk-flier, if not an absolute night-flier. The 

 flight is heavy and fluttering in the day time. 



Larva. — Head squarish, same breadth as height, light brown-yellow 

 in colour ; six black spots transversely across the middle of the face ; a 

 semicircle of four black spots round the top of the face. Anal seg- 

 ment depressed, rounded at the extremity, with two black, shiny, 

 subdorsal patches at the hinder margin. Colour of body french-grey, 

 suffused dorsally on segments 5 to 12 with light yellow ; a black 

 band covers the front half of segments 6, 8, and 10 ; segments 4 and 12 

 have a large black patch above the lateral margin; the rest is spotted 

 and lined symmetrically with black. 



Pupa. — Light yellowish-green in colour ; a semicircle of orange on 

 the front of the head, round which is a circle of black spots; from the 

 centre of the spots arises a conical, sharp, short tubercle; along the 

 front margin of the thorax is a dorsal streak flanked by a subdorsal 

 one and a lateral black spot ; shoulders tipped with black ; a lateral 

 row of large abdominal black spots, one spot to each segment ; cre- 

 master triangular, black. 



Habits. — Eggs laid in batches of from five to twenty, in lines, on 

 underside of leaf; larva gregarious while young ; after second moult, 

 makes a cell and eats the cuticle of leaf in a quarter of a circle from 

 midrib upwards to the edge of the leaf, feeding inside the area thus 

 marked off only while in that stage. When grown, wanders to feed, 

 returning to its cell. 



179. Ismene fergusonii, de Niceville. (Plate VII, Fig. 3.) 



This, the largest but one of our skippers, is found all over the dis- 

 trict in similar localities to the last, preferring the damp evergreens 

 and cool valleys of nallas, where the food-plant of its larva is plentiful 

 about the rocks of waterfalls and by the sides of streams. It 

 flies much like the Sphingidce moths, making a distinctly audible 

 fluttering with its wings. The butterfly is not commonly met with 

 anywhere, but may be caught on the tops of the hills round Karwar 

 on misty afternoons during the rains, and about evergreens towards 

 the evening. Nearly all of our specimens — and they are many — have 

 been bred from larvae found on a large creeper, Combretum externum, 

 Koxb. The insect is a dusk flier. 



