450 BRITISH LEPIDOPTERA. 



July, 1882, from Zermatt, with other full-fed examples, fed but little, 

 and in August laid up for hybernation, one going safely through 

 until April 19th, 1883, when it commenced feeding again. Baker 

 reports them as having a great fondness for water, but Buckler 

 sprinkled the food of some in his possession with disastrous results. 

 They feed in a state of nature in the sunshine, almost buried in the 

 tufts of the leaves of Silene acaulis or in the fleshy mass of Cherleria 

 sedoides, as well as on many other Alpine plants. Bateson says that in 

 climbing the Tosa Falls Valley (July 9th-16th, 1897) he noticed that he 

 first passed the imagines, freshly emerging ; then he came across the 

 cocoons, either on stones or on twigs of the Alpine rhododendron, 

 then he found smaller larvae higher up, and at last he dug out several 

 that were still buried in the snow. 



Larva. — When newly -hatched the larva is " a plump sausage-shaped 

 little creature" (Buckler), with a black, shiny head, yellowish-olive- 

 green in colour, most minutely dotted with black, and having a row 

 of subdorsal orange blotches. The usual tubercles are black, each 

 bearing a long, pointed black bristle. The skin is rather pubescent. 

 After its first moult, the larva appears much paler coloured, of a drab 

 tint, and showing dark subdorsal markings, but when it is about 

 three weeks old the larva is dark olive-green on the back, with the 

 sides lighter green, and it has a subdorsal row of dark brown tuber- 

 cular warts, with a faint stripe of yellowish below them. It is about 

 two lines in length just before hybernation, the colour dark olive-green 

 with an interrupted black subdorsal stripe, below which at the end 

 of each segment is a transverse oval spot of orange-yellow, the surface 

 of the skin being much covered with little fascicles of black hairs. 

 After hybernation, it moults again, and is then about 3J lines in length, 

 its colour on the dorsum and sides dark green, and so much covered 

 with black bristly hairs radiating from the warts, as to appear blackish- 

 green in comparison with the olive-greenish-yellow tint of the ventral 

 area. The dorsal marking is velvety-black. The larva reaches the 

 blackest stage towards the end of June and beginning of July. It 

 is then " intensely and beautifully black, which gives additional 

 brilliancy by force of contrast to the light greenish-yellow lateral spots." 

 The head is black and shining, the prothorax green and smooth in 

 front ; the segmental divisions, when the larva is stretched out, ap- 

 pear greenish, but all the rest of the upper surface is thickly covered 

 with black hairs. Buckler describes the full-grown larva as being 

 from seven to eight lines in length, sometimes more, and nearly three 

 in breadth, of elliptical figure, but with the head small and retractile 

 within the 2nd segment (prothorax), and this also being in part re- 

 tractile, is twice as long as any of the others, and tapering in front ; 

 the anal segment is slightly tapered and rounded off behind ; all the 

 segments are plump, and cut extremely deep ; the head is black and 

 glossy, with green upper lip edged with black, the antennal papillae 

 whitish tipped with black ; the front, retractile, half of the second 

 (prothoracic) segment is green and naked, the other half and likewise 

 all the other segments of the body have the ground colour of the back 

 and sides very dark green ; along each side is a broken velvety-black 

 stripe interrupted at the end of each segment beyond the second (pro- 

 thoracic) or third (mesothoracic) segment by a bright yellow elliptical 

 transverse spot ; each segment bears a series of ovate tubercular emi- 



