30 BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



pods. Our own experience of the larvae of other umbellifer-feeding 

 species is that their resting-habits are somewhat similar to those of 

 Papilio machaon. This is certainly the case with the larva of P. 

 alexanor, which, when small, closely resembles a bird's-dropping, but, 

 when larger, is not at all easy to discover among the umbels of the food- 

 plant, unless closely sought after, although, stretched out at full length, 

 it appears somewhat conspicuous. Mathew notes (Trans. Ent. ISoc. 

 Lond,,' 1888, p. 176) that the larvae of P. erectheus feed perfectly 

 exposed, and the young ones bear a strong resemblance to a bird's- 

 dropping. The gregarious larvae of Laertias philenor often rest with 

 their thoracic legs clasped and the front segments raised, but not 

 nearly so much as those of Papilio machaon, although they often take 

 up an outstretched position, with the true legs touching the surface of 

 the leaf ; in their early stages they habitually rest on the underside 

 of the leaves of their foodplant, and, later, when they are about to 

 undergo ecdysis, but they also take up this position later in life, 

 not, Floersheim thinks, for the purpose of concealment, as 

 Scudder avers, but because of the difficulty of finding foothold on the 

 upper surface ; the larvae, however, much more frequently select a 

 position at the end of a young shoot, resting with the anterior 

 segments slightly raised, whilst the full-grown larvae feed fully exposed 

 in companies of two and three, loving to sun themselves, when not 

 feeding, on the topmost stems of their foodplant, where they are most 

 conspicuous. Floersheim notes that the immature red-brown larvae, 

 massed together on the undersides of the large leaves of Aristoloehia 

 sipho, bear a somewhat striking resemblance to the brown blotches 

 which form on the sunburnt leaves, although, as already noted, they 

 seem to court exposure later in life. 



The larvae of Heraclides crespliontes, when young, resemble very 

 closely the excrement of birds, which Scudder supposes may afford a 

 considerable protection against insectivorous animals ; when young, 

 also, they appear to choose the underside of the leaves on which to rest, 

 motionless, but, later, they select the upperside, and, when full-grown, 

 the branches or the long leaf-stalk of prickly-ash, a foodplant they 

 share with orange, etc. The larva of this species maintains the bird's- 

 dropping appearance throughout life. The larva of Jasoniades glaucus 

 when young, prepares a definite resting-place ; it weaves a silken 

 carpet on the leaf, and remains thereon with its body arched when not 

 feeding, travelling to the edge of the leaf to feed, and biting deep 

 excavations therefrom, and returning to its resting-place. After 

 moulting it selects a new drooping leaf, and spins a fresh carpet, 

 always choosing, however, a position in which its body hangs, when 

 at rest, in a vertical or nearly vertical position, with its head upwards, 

 so that its excrement falls to the ground and the carpet remains clean. 

 After its third moult, and contemporaneously with its change to adult 

 colour and form, the larva changes its method of constructing its web 

 or hammock, which is now scarcely at all attached to the centre of the 

 leaf, but spins interlacing threads from one side of the leaf to the 

 other; Gosse says (Can. Nat., p. 298) that the larva stretches its bed 

 of silk so tightly from one edge of the leaf to the other, that it bends 

 it up, and a section of it would represent a bow, the silk being the 

 string, and that, on this elastic bed, the larva, reposes, the fore-part 

 of the body drawn in so as to swell out that part on which the eye- 



