485 
THE LARVA AND PUPA OF SPALGIS EPIUS, 
WESTWOOD. 
By B. H. ArrKen. 
(With Plates A and B.) 
( Read before the Bombay Natural History Society on 10th March 1894,) 
Spalgis epius, Westwood, is a small butterfly of the family Lyce- 
nid, not handsome or brightly coloured, but so curiously marked that 
there is little difficulty in distinguishing it from all our other “ Blues,” 
The upperside is brown, with a quadrangular whitish spot, or patch, 
in the middle of the forewing. But when the butterfly is resting, 
with wings closed, it is the underside we see, and this is of a clear 
French-grey colour, covered with a tracery of very fine, dark, zig-zag 
lines. In the centre of each wing there is a small, oval, whitish 
spot, and the peculiarity of the butterfly’s appearance is completed by 
the very short antenne and bright green eyes. The forewing of the 
male is sharply pointed, that of the female more rounded. It is 
found, I believe, throughout India, and, though not exactly a rare 
butterfly, does not seem to be plentiful anywhere. Mr, Moore, in 
his great book on the Lepidoptera of Ceylon, gave a figure of a curious 
object, green and red, with long processes on its back, as the larva 
of Spalgis epius, and said that it fed on Huphorbiacew. Afterwards Mr. 
EK. EH. Green, of Ceylon, wrote to Mr. de Nicéville that he had reared 
the larvae of Spalgis epius, or some butterfly indistinguishable from it, and 
that they were carnivorous, feeding upon the white, fluffy, plant- 
louse known to gardeners as the “ mealy bug.” Mr. de Nicéville pub- 
lished Mr. Green’s observations in his book, and evidently leaned to 
the view that he was right and Mr, Moore wrong ; but I had not seen 
the passage when, in December, 1891, I saw a female Spalgis epius 
flying suspiciously about a bush and thought it might be laying its 
eggs. This led me to examine the plant, and almost at once I found 
an unmistakeable lyczenid pupa. Then I instituted a regular search, 
but not a larva could I find, nor any trace of one. The leaves of the 
plant were nowhere eaten, and it was too much infested with “ mealy 
bug ” to afford fresh, wholesome food to delicate insects. I had 
almost given up the search when I noticed that some of the bugs were 
enormously large. I brushed the white, woolly secretion off these, and 
they were uncommonly like lycsenid larvee. They were of the wood- 
louse form so common among the larve of that family, of a dark 
5 
