CARNIVOROUS HABITS OF BUTTERFLY LARVJE. 39 



grown ant-grub, which, however, was released when the larva was 

 turned over. Even giving them small ants' nests in confinement was not 

 successful, and they had to be returned to the nest in order to feed-up 

 successfully to pupation stage. Dodd's further remarks are to the 

 effect that the larva? move from nest to nest, that they are so tough- 

 skinned that the mandibles of the ants can make little or no impression 

 upon them, and to protect its head and legs the larva just lowers its 

 sides, and is secure. Although the evidence here offered is sufficient 

 to lead us to accept the fact that the larva lives in ants' nests, it is by 

 no means satisfying that it lives on the grubs of the ants. Green 

 observes (Ent., xxxv., p. 202) that the evidence that they are really 

 carnivorous appears to be proved by the fact that they seized, and 

 attempted to eat, some of the grubs, but he further observes that they 

 do not appear to have been satisfied with that diet, and asks whether 

 it is not possible that their proper food may be some species of Coccid 

 enclosed in the ants' nests. He says that, "in Ceylon, the arboreal 

 nests of this same ant almost invariably include colonies of Coccidae, 

 Aphididae, and Aleurodidae, and adds that there is, in Ceylon, also, a 

 coccidophagous Lycsenid larva, viz., that of Spalgis epius, which he has, 

 on more than one occasion, found inside nests of another tree-ant, 

 Gremastogaster dohrni, feeding upon ' mealy bugs,' Dactylopius sp., 

 enclosed therein." 



Green communicated his observations on the carnivorous habits of 

 Spalgis epius to Niceville, who published them in his Butts, of India, 

 vol. iii., pp. 55-56. He says that Spalgis epius has been several times 

 reared from a larva that associates with, and feeds upon, the mealy- 

 bug, Dactylopius adonidum. The larva is dull olive-green above, with 

 numerous minute dark bristles and a lateral fringe of brown hairs ; 

 beneath pale green, slightly suffused with pink on anterior segments. 

 It partially covers and conceals itself with the mealy secretion from 

 the Dactylopius. Independently, Aitken gives {Journal Bomb. Nat. 

 Hist. Soc, viii., pp. 485-487) an account of the carnivorous habits of 

 the same species, a 2 of which he saw in December, 1891, flying about 

 a bush absolutely infested with " mealy-bug," some of which appeared 

 to be suspiciously large, and which, when the white woolly secretion 

 was brushed off, proved to be Lyca?nid larva?. A lateral fringe of 

 bristles, continued round the prothorax, was immediately used by the 

 larva to shovel a quantity of the white stuff on to their backs and 

 clothe their nakedness, after being denuded. They were then seen to 

 be feeding on the mealy-bugs, burying their heads in the down covering 

 them. A number, secured and placed in pill-boxes, fed up on the 

 mealy-bugs, and pupated in due course, and, in a fortnight, imagines of 

 Spalgis epius emerged. 



In 1891, Holland received (Psyche, vi., pp. 201-202) larva? of 

 Spalgis s-signata from Kangwe, on the Ogove River, in West Africa, 

 collected by Good, who found the dark brownish larva? on the leaves 

 of a Frangipanni, the body all covered over with a whitish substance, and 

 which was assumed at once to consist of the remains of plant-lice, 

 with which the undersides of the leaves, on which the larva? were found, 

 abounded. Suspicion was at once aroused that the caterpillars must 

 have fed upon these white plant-lice, because no leaves appeared to be 

 eaten. The white fluffy substance was readily rubbed off, but there was 

 sufficient left to prove that it was really the remains of the plant-lice, 



