40 BRITISH BUTTERFLIES. 



stouter ribs. Spinning a thread wherever they go, they often, in 

 travelling from leaf to leaf, make quite a pathway of silk, and, if the 

 branch be suddenly jarred, they will drop and hang suspended in mid- 

 air, and, after reassurance, climb up again with the thoracic legs." 

 Edwards says that the young larvae of Chlorippe celtis are not so 

 intensely gregarious as those of C. clyton, but they remain upon the 

 same leaf, scattered in small bodies over the surface near together 

 without being in close contact as is the habit of C. clyton. It is not 

 usual to find moro than one on a leaf in the natural state after they 

 have become half grown, and they probably disperse at the third moult. 



Buckler observes tbat, after the second moult, the larva of Apatura 

 iris takes up a position on a twig for hybernation ; it envelops the hinder 

 half of its body in a mass of silk and remains immovable. Newman 

 observed one, on November 13th, descend from a leaf, cover with silk 

 the rind of a twig immediately below the attachment of the leaf, grasp 

 this web firmly with its claspers, stretch itself out at full length, with 

 its horns porrected before it, and thus settle itself down for the winter. 

 Muscbamp always finds the larvae of A. iris and A. ilia in nature, in the 

 Bavois Woods, on the smooth part of a branch, never near a twig, and 

 they are invariably in spring-time of the same colour as the bark, on 

 green wood the hybernating larvae are green, on red w 7 ood, red, and 

 on grey wood, grey (Ent. Bee, xix., p. 145). Gillmer. observes 

 (in lift.) that the larva of Apatura ilia, towards the end of October, 

 spins up near a leaf- bud of Populus tremula, to which it bears 

 considerable resemblance, and where its detection is very difficult, or 

 it chooses a place where a twig has been broken off, or a quite smooth 

 place on a branch, where it may hybernate. Occasionally one finds 

 hybernating larvae on twigs, or even in cracks of the bark of the main 

 stem. It has been suggested that the latter larvae have fallen with 

 leaves before the necessity of hybernation has overtaken them, and 

 have crawled up the stem again in order to find a suitable position. 



The actual details of hybernation of the North American Apaturids 

 in nature appear to be unknown. Edwards observes that "the larvae of 

 Chlorippe clyton probably, to some extent, seek shelter in the rough corky 

 bark of the hackberry, though many, no doubt, fall with the leaves and 

 perish." Scudder converts (Butts. New England, i., p. 247) this sugges- 

 tion of falling with the leaves into a certainty, for he remarks that the 

 larvae "feed in company till the time for hybernation arrives, when, huddled 

 together in companies of five or more, on a leaf whose surface they have 

 covered with silk, and thereby curled somewhat., they change with the leaf 

 to a brownish or vinous tint, and drop with it to the earth .... In 

 spring they make their way again from the ground to the tree." This 

 is partly extracted from Kiley's statement (Ann. Rept. State Missouri, vi., 

 p. 141), but much is so contrary to the usual habits of Apaturid larvae 

 that one would like to have very definite confirmation. In confine- 

 ment, Edwards observed that " the hybernating larvae rested on a 

 common bed of silk web, which covered the surface of the leaf, each 

 with its head bent under, so that the face was in the same plane w 7 ith 

 the lower side of the body, the back arched, and the last segment 

 appressed. The larvae of ( '. celtis, also, hybernates after its second 

 moult. Edwards says that some commenced as early as June, in 

 1873; in confinement, some composing themselves on the leaves in the 



