HESPERIIBM. 221 



Family HESPERIID^. 



The Hesperiidse form a connecting link between the Rhvpalocera and Heterocera, 

 they are mostly brown of various shades of colour, many are crepuscular, flying in the 

 late afternoon and early morning. Professor Wood-Mason states that in Cachar a 

 great many species used to come late every afternoon to visit a certain plant with 

 blue flowers, and Doherty remarks * that it is a most interesting fact illustrating the 

 close relationship between the Hesperiidse and Sph ingidse ; we ourselves observed the 

 same habit at Mhow in Central India, where for about a fortnight, on a jungle tree 

 covered with white flowers, many Hesperids were found visiting the tree every late 

 afternoon, the Hesperids were the first arrivals, and used to be annoyed and finally 

 driven away by the crowd of Sphinges that arrived later, literally swarming the tree. 



Many species of Hesperids have the habit of resting in a moth-like manner on the 

 underside of leaves with their wings wide open, and the Australian genus Euschemon 

 is furnished with a substantial frenulum and retinaculum, a very distinctive character 

 of the Heterocera, enabling the creature to rest with wide-open wings without the 

 exercise of any muscular action. 



The life history of the Hesperiidce, which to some extent has been studied by such 

 careful observers as Doherty, Davidson, Bell and Aitken, show the peculiar moth-like 

 habits of many species in the larval and pupal stages, the larvae forming cells by 

 turning over the edges of leaves, binding them with silk, covering the insides of the 

 cells with silk and pupating inside them. The caterpillars are generally easily 

 recognised. Davidson, Bell and Aitken say,f "The head is large, the body smooth, long 

 and thick-set in the middle, and usually green in colour, and the habit of rolling up a 

 leaf to form a cell is very general ; they are more likely to be mistaken for the larvai 

 of moths than for those of any family of butterflies, but the observant collector 

 will notice that while those moth larvae which form cells generally foul them, the 

 Hesperiidse are cleanly in their habits ; some larvae hibernate ; the larva when full 

 grown stops eating and shuts itself up in a cell as if it were about to become a pupa, 

 but it does not actually undergo that change for some weeks or months." Doherty 

 says X the eggs are very large, very few (except in the genera Hesperia and Gomalia), 

 only one or two matured at a time ; opaque, dome-shaped, smooth, or with delicate. 



* Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, 1889, p. 133. 

 t Journ. Bo. Nat. Hist. Soc. 1890, p. 369. 

 I Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, 1886, p. 111. 



