﻿1870.] 233 



They fed well on Carex sylvatica ; when at rest, stretched out flat along the 

 blades of their food ; looping in walking, and jumping about angrily when touched. 



The newly-hatched larva is a little greenish looper, with the usual dots show- 

 ing brown, and emitting bristles. As it grows, it becomes more and more of a 

 full green after every moult. When it is full-grown, the length is quite an inch, 

 the figure slender, cylindrical, uniform throughout in bulk, save that the 3rd seg- 

 ment seems a trifle swollen, and the last three segments taper slightly to the anal 

 flap, which is bluntly rounded off, or almost squared off; the head is hard and 

 globular, about as wide as the second segment ; there are two pairs of ventral 

 legs fully developed and useable, and the rudiments of another pair, useless. 



The colour is a full velvety-green, with a pulsating dorsal vessel of a darker 

 tint ; there is a fine whitish-green sub-dorsal line, and a rather broader spiracular 

 line of very pale yellow ; the spiracles are indistinctly brownish, and the hinder 

 segments paler than the rest of the back ; the belly is also paler, but still of a 

 soft rich green ; the head somewhat yellowish-green. 



The larva retired under ground for pupation. — Id. 



Description of the larva of Thanaos Tages. — On the 28th of May, 1868, I 

 happened to meet with this species on the wing in a thicket, and brought home 

 with me three specimens alive ; and luckily having a plant of Lotus corniculatus 

 potted, I covered it with a glass cylinder and placed them therein. 



After a few days, I saw that two of the butterflies were dead, whilst the third 

 still looked lively, and fortunately proving to be an impregnated female, she 

 deposited on the leaflets of the plant a few pale greenish pellucid eggs, of a some- 

 what elliptical figm*e standing on end. 



About the middle of June I noticed the egg shells were empty, but I could 

 not see the young larvae either then, or for some time subsequently, until June 

 28th, when at last I detected them, three in number ; they had been all the while 

 feeding in little caves, formed by drawing together three leaflets with silken 

 threads, and it was the glistening of these threads in the sun that first caught my 

 eye. Each cave was formed by the two outer leaflets being drawn almost close 

 together (leaving space enough for the ejection of frass), and the middle one being 

 bent over them like a curved roof; all this was managed quite naturally, so that 

 the cave passed easily for a leaf not quite expanded. 



Some of these caves had already served their turn and been abandoned for 

 newer ones, and it appeared that the larvas had been feeding on the inner surface 

 of the leaflets; in others I was able with the help of a lens to detect through the 

 interstices somewhat of the fat form of their tenants. 



On the 30th of June I turned one out for figuring ; it was then nearly three- 

 eighths of an inch long, with a prominent dark purplish-brown head covered with 

 minute pale greenish points ; the body rounded above, a little flattened underneath, 

 plump, and tapering a little at each end ; the second segment much smaller than 

 the third, especially in the part just behind the head ; the colour of the body a 

 pale rather bluish-green, somewhat paler still on the sides and belly ; a distinct 

 dorsal line of darker green, a sub-dorsal line faintly paler than the ground colour; 

 the whole surface of back and sides irrorated or shagreened with exceedingly 

 minute greenish-white points. 



