FAMILY HABITS IN BUTTERFLY LARVAE THE PAPILIONIDS. 37 



bate leaves, devours not only the leaves, but the bark and soft shoots of 

 their foodplant, when the leaves are demolished. The larvae of this 

 species are said by de Niceville to make a very audible noise when 

 eating, just as the larvae of large Saturniid moths do. Similarly, the 

 .young larvae of Heraclides cresphontes feed at first only on the tenderest 

 leaves of orange-trees, but, when well-grown, eat both leaves and 

 shoots (that have not hardened into wood), sometimes completely 

 demolishing young trees, and appearing to feed wholly in the day- 

 time. The larvae of Papilio polygenes, another orange-feeder, is said 

 to feed openly and to eat voraciously, especially in the last stage. 

 Hamlin's observation (Scudder'' s Butts. New England, p. 1360), that a 

 larva of this species, in the antepenultimate stage, doubled its length 

 in a single morning from *5in. to lin., and increased ten times its 

 bulk in the same time, requires confirmation, but, for all that, in the 

 more southern localities of this species, the larvae do feed up rapidly, 

 Grundlach noting that, in Cuba, the larval life does not last altogether 

 more than nine or ten days. The feeding-habits of the more cryptic- 

 ally-coloured Papilionids are very different from those that live fully- 

 exposed, the former, as a rule, being more sluggish, slower both in 

 movement and feeding, and often, consequently, in growth, a character 

 particularly noticed in the Bombay species by Davidson and Aitken, 

 who observe (Ann. Bomb. Xat. History Soc, v., pp. 361 et seq.) that, whilst 

 the larvae of the Omiihoptera group are easy to rear, eat freely in any 

 situation, and grow fast, the larvae of the Agamemnon group are very 

 dissimilar in their habits, being extremely shy, resting motionless 

 during the day, eating little and growing slowly, habits shared largely 

 by our better-known Iphiclides larvae. Many of these cryptically- 

 coloured larvae, too, leave their resting-place for food, not resting on 

 the leaf they have partly eaten. Scudder notes that the larva of 

 Jasoniades glaucus feeds both by day and night, does not devour the 

 leaf it rests on after its first moult, but goes off every few hours for a 

 dinner on another leaf, indeed, the same leaf as it has dined on before, 

 always finishing one on repeated visits, before attacking another. He 

 further notes a similar habit in the larva of Euphoeades troilus, which, 

 however, as already noted, makes throughout its life a cylindrical 

 nest of a leaf, or part of a leaf, in which it hides, and which it leaves 

 only for the purpose of feeding,- usually on some other leaf only 

 attacking that of which it makes its hiding-place when quite young. 



As bearing on the feeding-habits of the Papilionids, it may be 

 noted that more than one author observes in some particular species 

 cannibalistic tendencies, e.g., Aitken and Davidson say (Journ. Bomb. 

 Nat. Hist. Soc, v., pp. 362 et seq.) that the larva of Ornithoptera minos 

 will, if not well-supplied with fresh food, devour pupae of its own kind, 

 whilst Witfield notes (Scudder s Butts. New England, p. 1273) that the 

 larvae of Iphiclides ajax show more highly- developed cannibalistic 

 propensities than any other Papilionid larvae of his acquaintance ; 

 with regard to this, Floersheim states (Ent. Bee, xxi., p. 115) that 

 only when short of food does the larva of 1. ajax show cannibalistic 

 tendencies, and then not to any great extent; he says that he only lost 

 two out of twenty in this way, though they were so short of food that 

 several were unable to pupate successfully. 



Too little is recorded of the larval habits of the Papilionids of the 

 more northern latitudes for us to be able to judge how far the develop- 



