1870.j 115 
am able to offer some account of its transformations. And I feel more pleasure in 
doing so from the fact that, although I have never been able to speak out decidedly 
till now, I have long felt that there is some confusion in the accounts already pub- 
lished ; and I am sure that unless this species is very variable, the descriptions 
after Duponchel and Hiibner, which do duty in our books, are defective and in- 
accurate. 
On the 8th of June, 1870, whilst on a visit to Mr. F, Merrifield, I was taken 
by him toa locality near Brighton, where the butterflies were on the wing; and I 
was fortunate enough to secure a pair in cop. These I took home with me, and 
placed the same evening on a plant of Viola canina, and next day I noticed several 
eges deposited in various sites,—on the upper and under surfaces of the leaves, as 
well as on the stems of the plant. The larves hatched in about eleven or twelve 
days, that is about June 20th, and were all out on the 22nd, and, after breakfasting 
on their egg-shelis, fed away at once on the violet ; for a time they kept abreast, 
all feeding well; and with a view of trying to procure by artificial means a rapid 
development, and so to avoid the dangers of hybernation, I had a portion of them 
placed in a hot-house. 
However, I did not confine my attention to this portion alone, but attended to 
all the larvze carefully, and by the 18th July, was rewarded by finding one of those 
not in the hot-house plainly giving tokens that he was bent on outstripping his 
fellows; by the 24th, he had gained a length of half-an inch (all the rest, 
whether in hot-house or not, remaining—as I had found so many broods in former 
years remain—at the length of about three-eighths of an inch, and, apparently, 
meaning to hybernate) ; and by the 30th, it had attained its full length of nearly 
aninch. On August 6th, it fixed itself on a bramble stick, and on the evening of 
the 7th, became a pupa. 
The egg is of a dumpy blunt sugar-loaf shape, with a thin soft glistening shell, 
which is ribbed with about eighteen ribs, and transversely reticulate, but not very 
boldly ; its colour at first is a subdued pale yellow; next becoming more drab ; 
afterwards the lower part of the egg becomes dirty whitish, and the upper part 
purplish-black, no doubt from the head of the larva showing through. 
The newly-hatched larva is a little pale olive creature, with shining black 
head; the pale brownish tubercles distinct, and bearing each a pale, longish, 
jointed bristle. By the time it is about two lines in length, the skin looks translu- 
cent, the colour is more greenish, the tubercles are larger—bearing the long bristles 
or hairs as before, and there now appear four pairs of opaque brown spots placed on 
the sides of the fifth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh segments. By the time the length 
of a quarter of an inch is obtained, there is another change, and then the fine 
bristles give way to black hairy spines; the colour is smoky-olive on the back, with 
a paler stripe of almost a dull yellow along the side, and a pale spot below each 
sub-dorsal spine, followed again below by a stripe of the darker colour of the back. 
On attaining three-eighths of an inch in length, its appearance is again changed, 
it then has a broad dorsal stripe of pinkish-grey, a sub-dorsal stripe of blackish- 
brown, and below it, on the sixth, eighth, tenth and twelfth segments, are blotches 
of orange-ochreous ; below these, on all the segments, there are similar blotches, 
forming a somewhat interrupted broad stripe. 
