224 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 
butterfly must deposit its eggs on some other plant, so that it is evidently 
much less limited in its diet than many of our caterpillars. 
The egg is a beautiful object, blue-green, flattened and depressed at 
the top, and covered with a net work like lace ; raised on the surface. 
The larvee, when full grown, are a little over one fourth of an inch 
long and in shape a long oval, the head very small, black, and drawn— 
when at rest—within the next segment, which falls over the head like a 
hood. The body is green, dark dorsally, pale at the sides, and is marked 
dorsally by eight sagittate, tuberculated, yellow-green spots, one on each 
segment, pointing forwards, and truncated. | 
The chrysalis is dark brown, covered with minute hairs; of a long oval 
shape, compressed at the middle. Length 7s inch. 
We obtained eggs of Zhecla poeas also, but only after trying many 
species of plants, as the food plant of this butterfly was entirely a matter 
of conjecture. But several eggs were laid on Blackberry. The larvae 
hatched, but did not eat, and soon died. 
Eggs of Phyciodes tharos were obtained on grass, after trying the 
butterfly on every plant we could think of. The eggs were laid on the 
leaves and stems of a clump of grass placed under a glass jar. Many 
were laid directly on the sides of the jar. These eggs hatched, but the 
caterpillars refused to eat. 
We had better success with Phyciodes nycteis; a female having been 
confined with a plant of Actinomeris squarrosa, she forthwith proceeded 
to deposit a large cluster of eggs, about 100, side by side and in -regular 
rows, on the under side of a leaf. The larve hatched after a long 
interval, 13 or 14 days, and we at once from the cuticle of the leaf trans- 
ferred them to a glass and supplied them with fresh leaves, and in due 
time the caterpillars reached the third moult. At this they stopped 
feeding, and are now in a state of hybernation. These caterpillars are 
dark brown, covered with pencils of short bristles of the same hue, that 
proceed from longitudinal rows of tubercles. When feeding they consume 
the whole surface of the leaf, which becomes very filthy from the excre- 
mentitious matter mixing with the juices of the leaf. But the caterpillars 
emerge from the mine as clean as a mole from under the ground. 
I have also hybernating specimens of the larvæ of Diana, cybele and 
aphrodite, the eggs of which were obtained by Mr. Mead in the same 
manner. I consider this process of obtaining eggs, provided the food 
