360 BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



rather by size and position to belong to the micropylar area, which is 

 consequently merely approximately round, and really of rather 

 irregular outline. The top is very flat, nearly as much so as that of 

 A. coridon (rather a larger egg). The true egg is less flat, i.e., the 

 top is more dome-shaped, but, at about O20mm. from the centre, 

 the pillars of the white coating appear and, becoming longer, raise the 

 apparent surface and increase the width of the flat top ; the central 

 plain has merely a network of white lines, and it is only outside this 

 that the columns at their angles are developed ; this top network is 

 angular, the spaces being very irregular in shape but for the most 

 part quadrangular (those in A. coridon are more rounded, the lines 

 from angle to angle being somewhat curved instead of straight). This 

 distinction may not hold good of all specimens and races, but it obtains 

 in the specimens under examination. Where the pillars become 

 pronounced (they are highest where the top turns down into the side, 

 but all also well-developed on the sides) the network is in triangles, 

 with a few irregularities, and the columns have six lines hung, as it 

 were, from their summits to the next ones ; they are often thick and 

 look as if each line came separately to the top ; the side of each cell is 

 about O04mm. The green surface of the egg at the bottom of the 

 cells is dotted or pitted very finely (Chapman, June, 1907). The egg 

 presents an almost circular outline about -6mm. in diameter. It is 

 comparatively shallow, the thickness being somewhat less than half the 

 diameter ; the egg appears to be depressed on the upper surface when 

 viewed so that the raised reticulation of the margin is in view. The 

 egg proper is pale green in colour ; the surface appears to present two 

 series of oblique lines runningin opposite directions, so that it is covered, 

 as it were, with a very well-developed reticulation, fairly regular 

 in some parts, irregular in others. The raised lines that cut each 

 other to form this reticulation are shiny, silvery-white, whilst at each 

 angular point of the reticulation, the cutting lines give rise to a 

 prominent white knob. Almost the whole, of the upper surface has 

 the appearance of a flat, shallow basin due to the great prominence of 

 the marginal knobs ; in the centre of the upper surface is a minute 

 micropylar depression quite bright green in colour (Tutt, June 2nd, 

 1898). Other descriptions are those by Hellins {Larvae Brit. Butts., 

 etc., i., p. 107), by Tutt (Brit. Butts., 1896, p. 172). Clark figures 

 the egg (Ent. Bee, xii., pi. xi., fig. £3). 



Habits of Larva. — In hatching, the larva eats a hole out of the 

 top of the egg, generally rather to one side, but rarely sufficient^ so 

 to avoid destroying the micropylar area. It immediately commences 

 to tunnel into the underside of the leaves of Rippocreiris comoita, eating 

 out the inner substance over a small area, leaving the upper skin 

 untouched, thus making a transparent white blotch. Chapman observes 

 that a number of larvae that hatched between June 20th-24th, 1901, 

 dotted the leaves of II. cornosa with such white spots, into which they 

 had bored and eaten out the parenchyma (like Coleophorid larvae) 

 but retired, as soon as they had fed, to the stems close down to the 

 roots, often several inches from their feeding-places, a long journey 

 for such minute larvae. The larvae that hatch in June, grow 

 moderately rapidly through July, soon devour a whole leaflet commenc- 

 ing from the side, and are full-fed usually from early to middle August. 

 Chapman notes that about a score of larvae, from eggs placed on grow- 



