RURALIDiE. 315 



echinoid, or tiarate, in shape, usually covered with a most beautiful 

 surface ornamentation, often of a surpassing beauty only equalled in 

 our experience in the eggs of the Limenitids ; rarely is the reticulation 

 low, or the egg comparatively smooth ; details of the eggs of the 

 various species may be obtained from our extended descriptions. 



The larvae are characterised by their "onisciform" or "woodlouse" 

 appearance. Very rarely, even in their early stages, are they at all 

 inclined to be cylindrical ; they are generally covered with minute 

 microscopic hairs, or hair-points ; their prolegs are usually very short, 

 and their gliding movements have often been compared with those of 

 slugs. The large prothorax and small head (exactly opposite to the 

 condition found in the Urbicolids) are remarkably suited to the peculiar 

 habit that the larvae have of withdrawing the head within the pro- 

 thoracic segment ; the abdomimal segments are peculiar, and the 

 terminal segments have often the appearance of being quite united, or 

 coalesced. The presence of an eversible vesicle on the dorsum of the 

 7th abdominal segment, from which a sweet fluid, beloved of ants, is 

 secreted, and the further development of a pair of lateral evaginable 

 processes on the 8th abdominal segment, whose function is unknown, 

 are also to be noted. 



The pupa is short, thick, ovate in outline, and rounded ; the head and 

 anal segments are turned ventrally, the waist developed, but still of con- 

 siderable thickness ; the surface usually covered with fine hairs ; 

 generally attached Papilionid- fashion by a cremastral attachment and 

 body-girth ; sometimes, however, unattached, or quite free. 



Of the imaginal structures the front pair of legs are atrophied in 

 the $ , but not in the ? . Scudder notes that this atrophy consists of 

 a complete or partial loss of the normal terminal appendages. In the 

 Ruralids (Theclids) the tarsi are armed at the tip with a pair of spines, 

 which are only slightly larger and more curved than the others, while 

 the inferior surface of the tarsi is furnished with an irregular mass of 

 spines on either side ; in the Lycaenids, the terminal armature consists 

 of a single, median, tapering claw, scarcely curved, while beneath, 

 the tarsi are supplied with only two or three rows of spines; in the 

 Chrysophanids a single median spine, differing from the others 

 only in size, occupies the tip, while the undersurface of the tarsi 

 is armed with frequent spines usually clustered upon the sides. Of ; 

 the antennae, Jordan says (Nov. Zool.,v., pp. 411-12) that the Ruralids 

 have preserved a most ancestral form of arrangement of bristles, and 

 adds that (1) the dorsal side is never without scaling, (2) the fine sense- 

 hairs distally are of very low type, (3) the configuration of the ventral 

 surface is ancestral, but sometimes shows faint indication of Erycinid 

 specialisation, (4) sense-bristles are ancestral on distal joints dorsally 

 and ventrally ; sometimes specialised as in Erycinid s, seldom as in 

 Hesperiids. The Lycaenids stand in relationship with Erycinids. 

 probably also with Urbicolids. With regard to the femoral spine 

 described by Horsfield and Westwood as being present on the middle 

 pair of legs, Scudder says " these are nothing more than an arrange- 

 ment of the scales, or hairs, for the greater mobility of the legs ; the 

 denuded femur and tibia show here no process and no depression 

 whatever." Scudder gives the following diagnosis of the family (Butts, 

 of New England, ii., pp. 791 et seq.) : — 



