CYANIK1S SEMIARGUS. 283 



•0-5mm. across, the height about 0-27mm., the level (top and bottom), 

 about 0*43mm. across, leaving 0*07mm. for the projection of the rounded 

 margin. The micropylar area is exceedingly small, compared with that 

 of various other Lycaenid eggs, the diameter of the area free from 

 white coating being less than 0-02mm. The sculpturing of the white 

 coating is in cells, nearly square, quite so on the sides, the squares 

 being formed by the lines of their margins passing spirally outwards from 

 the centre, and crossing each other at right angles, quite unlike the tri- 

 angular arrangement so frequent in Lycasnid eggs. As usual, the cells are 

 smaller centrally, and larger towards the margin, where they are about 

 O025mm.-0-O3mrn. in diameter; the pillars at the angles are short 

 and broad, somewhat square, with sometimes an appearance of 

 being four pillars fused together, occasionally the presence of a 

 central hollow is all that suggests such a compound structure. 

 Some eggs are very regularly marked, the cells being rectangular 

 almost all over, others have pentagons and other irregularities 

 in various places, but especially along the margins where the 

 curvature is greatest (Chapman). The egg is -025in. wide, and 

 •0104in. high. [It is very similar to that of Lycaena avion, of almost 

 the same size, and of similar structure ; the micropyle, however, is 

 much smaller, and but slightly sunken, resembling in this respect the 

 egg of Everes argiades.] The whole surface is covered with a 

 beautiful reticulated pattern ; the reticulations surrounding the 

 micropyle are simple, but gradually develop at each juncture into 

 raised knobs, which are prominent elsewhere over the surface. All 

 the reticulations resemble white-frosted glass, reflecting the beautiful 

 pale blue-green ground colour of the egg. Shortly before hatching it 

 assumes a greyish tinge (Frohawk). The egg of 0. semiargus dissected 

 from a ? , is of a bright green colour, of comparatively small size, 

 circular in outline, a depressed sphere (or rather a squat cylinder) in 

 form, rounded on all its edges, much flattened medially on its upper 

 surface, but the micropylar depression very slight. The surface of 

 the egg appears to be covered with an echinoid reticulation, the points 

 being of a whitish colour, the reticulation of the upper surface being- 

 less developed than that of the other part of the surface. The basal 

 area of attachment appears to be of about the same size as the 

 flattened area of the upper surface. [Described August 7th, 1907, 

 under a hand lens, from an egg dissected from a 2 taken on the St. 

 Gothard Pass, August 3rd, 1907. Other details could not be made 

 out with the power at disposal.] The egg is figured by Clark (Ent. 

 Bee, xii., pi. xi., fig. 4 (6 by error) ; see also our own figure by Tonge. 

 Habits of larva. — The larva usually eats about three-fourths of 

 the uppersurface of the egg, including the micropylar area, when it 

 escapes, sometimes the amount is rather less, and sometimes the side 

 suffers as well as the top. When hatched, the young larva bores 

 through the corolla, and usually goes direct to the ovary ; it eats, how- 

 ever, not unf requently, portions of the corolla and stamens. This is, 

 however, more frequently the case in the second instar. Almost always in 

 the first, and usually in the second, stadium, the larva is found with its 

 head as low down in the corolla and calyx, as the amount it has eaten of 

 the ovary allows it to be, and this attitude seems to be that in which it 

 undergoes the first moult. It goes from flower to flower, eating chiefly 

 the ovaries ; how often, if at all, it does this during the first instar, I 



