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in May, and lays its eggs in the same situations as P. proto- 

 dice. This year I sent Mr. W. H. Edwards a number of 

 young larvae, presumed to be those oi protodice — and certainly 

 seeming all to belong to the same species. But on the ist of 

 July he wrote : " Out of xny protodice larvae I got on the 30th 

 (June) several pupae (a $ pi'otodice emerged from one of them 

 some days later), and one of Antli. ausonides. I had not 

 noticed any difference in the larvae : I thought sometimes 

 some were blacker than others — more black hairs." So it 

 will be seen that in the earlier stages P. protodice and A. 

 ausonides have the closest resemblance — the larvae, in fact, 

 are not distinguishable. 



From these facts, I am inclined to believe that Anthocharis 

 ausonides on the one hand, and Pieris protodice and its allies 

 on the other, come nearest to the primitive stock from which 

 both arose — -and it is favourable to the idea of the antiquity 

 of ausonides that it is the one species of its genus in America 

 ranging to the far north — even Alaska. Assuming this, we 

 are perhaps at liberty to construct a hypothetical Protopieris, 

 and imagine a butterfly inhabiting the American continent 

 ages ago, in shape somewhere between the modern Pieris and 

 Leucophasia in markings — perhaps double-brooded — with a 

 central black spot and dark apical patches to the fore wings, 

 on the underside grey, marbling on the secondaries (for the 

 green I take to be a subsequent arrangement of the yellow 

 and black scales^) — in colour, possibly saffron or brimstone 

 yellow, though probably already white, or partly so. 



Mr. Weir said that the paper was entirely speculative, but 

 was full of suggestion. The assumption that the genus 

 Anthocharis was an American one was not so carefully worked 

 out as Mr. Scudder had argued out his view that V. antiopa 

 originated in America. In his (Mr. Weir's) opinion there 

 was not sufficient information on these matters to speculate 

 upon the origin of the genus Anthocharis. There were so 

 many of the group found in Europe that he did not see why 

 we had not as much claim to it as America. Mr. South re- 

 marked with regard to the question of colour, if he had under- 



' And the green veining of the underside of Pieris napi is of the same nature — 

 in neither case is there really any green pigment. 



