40 KANSAS UNIVERSITY QUARTERLY. 



Larva. Food plant, Opiiutia missouriensis, prickly pear cactus, 

 burrowing into the fleshy leaves and eating the soft, succulent, inner 

 tissues. Length, 40 millimeters. Five pairs of prolegs. Color, one 

 specimen, ultramarine blue; skin, semi-transparent and shining anter- 

 iorly, dead blue on dorsum ; second specimen, buffy with a bluish 

 suffusion, blue between segments, prolegs bluish, and last abdominal 

 segment blue, especially below; skin more opaque than in first speci- 

 men. No pronounced markings of skin ; spiracles shining black and 

 present on first thoracic and first to tenth abdominal segments. Head 

 flattened, slightly narrower than first thoracic segment, umber. Pro- 

 thoracic shield well marked, brownish black; anal shield, smoky 

 brownish. Clothing, limited to tubercled hairs sparsely distributed as 

 follows : a subdorsal line of small tubercles, two tubercles to a seg- 

 ment, each tubercle bearing three short, fine hairs ; a supra-stigmatic 

 line, one tubercle to each segment, each tubercle bearing three to four 

 fine hairs; a similar infra-stigmatic line; a sub-ventral line of 

 tubercles, bearing usually four fine hairs, the tubercles of the three 

 thoracic segments in this line situated at base of legs outside, and 

 similarly as to the prolegs on the third to sixth abdominal segments. 

 The tubercles in all the lines are faintly smoky. The larva is rather 

 heavy, and rotund in form, tapering toward both head and posterior 

 segment. It moves with a lumbering gait, but rather rapidly. 



Chrysalis. Length, 20 millimeters; in cocoon of silk, loosely 

 covered with small dirt-masses, As made in the breeding cage the 

 cocoons were above ground, but concealed under or in available 

 objects. 



Adult. The adults obtained from the breeding cage, (there are no 

 others in our collection), are easily distinguished from prodenialis 

 Wlk., by the much stronger dentations of the outer line of the pri- 

 maries. Prof. Smith kindly sent a specimen of prodenialis taken at 

 Ocean Grove, New Jersey, for comparison. The row of marginal 

 black spots on the primaries which Hulst (Tran. Am. Ent. Soc, v. 

 xvii, p. 172) mentions as distinctive of dentata is as pronounced in 

 Prof. Smith's specimen of prodenialis as in our dentata. The much 

 lighter color of the primaries, head and thorax in dentata as mentioned 

 by Hulst is characteristic. An interesting feature in the venation of 

 the hind wings in our bred specimens of dentata is the considerable 

 coalescence of the sub-costal and costal veins. Vein five is wanting, 

 as mentioned by Hulst. In addition, there is further departure from 

 a normal venation, in that vein seven after rising with six from its 

 stem, (Hulst says: "Six short stemmed with seven"), coalesces for a 

 short distance with eight and then runs free to the margin. Behind 



