FAMILY HABITS IN BUTTERFLY LARViE THE APATURIDS. 41 



glass in which they were kept, others directly on the sand at the 

 bottom of the glass, in either case, upon a coating of silk, which the 

 larva had spun. The colour of these larvae also changed to brown 

 with a slight mottling of vinous and green. (The rest of the larvae of 

 this brood went on to form a partial second-brood.) The larvae of the 

 autumnal brood all assume the hybernating colour after the second 

 moult. The young larvae of this brood are disinclined to move, and 

 will remain many hours in the same position or place, and were 

 observed, in 1874, to seek the sides of the heavy midribs, or depres- 

 sions in the surfaces, of the leaves, remaining motionless, although 

 then, and at any time during hybernation, it was not difficult to rouse 

 one from its lethargy, when it would slowly raise its head, or, perhaps, 

 move along a little, or it would throw back its head drowsily as if to 

 intimidate an enemy. Of the actual mode of hybernation of this species 

 in a natural state Edwards appears to be ignorant. He suggests the bark, 

 and the ground, as possible positions, based, perhaps, on Riley's state- 

 ment (Ann. Rept. State Missouri, vi., p. 139) that the larva, after passing 

 the second moult, ceases to eat, shrinks in size, stations itself on the 

 underside of a leaf, changes its fresh green colour for a dingy greyish- 

 brown, the better to keep in conformity with that of its dying support, 

 with which, eventually, it falls to the earth and there hybernates. 

 Riley's observations on this point were evidently made on larvae in 

 confinement (pp. cit., p. 142, lines 1 and 2), and one suspects 

 that the larvae of this American Apaturid, having taken the 

 trouble to spin over, and fasten with silk, a leaf, Limenitid-like, 

 or, as Edwards suggests, on the bark, Apaturid-like, hybernate on a 

 twig, or leaf which remains attached to the plant and does not fall in 

 the autumn, so that the actual natural hybernating habit of the 

 Apaturid larvae of both the Nearctic and Palaearctic species is probably 

 after all not so very different. 



After hybernation the larva of Apatura iris covers a leaf with 

 silk, and on this rests when not feeding ; for the purpose of a meal 

 it leaves its resting-place, eats rapidly and voraciously, cutting out a 

 large portion of a leaf in a few seconds, feeding chiefly at night, 

 although sometimes also by day, returning again to its silken carpet 

 to rest. When moving, the larva is not at all slow in its movements, 

 which are very graceful, as it turns and accommodates itself to the 

 various positions necessary to its progress. When eating or moving- 

 it is easily alarmed, a touch of the leaf, or a slight shake of the spray, 

 transforming it into a very different-looking creature. When resting, 

 its head faces the footstalk, and is bent down so as almost to touch 

 the leaf ; sometimes all the ventral legs, at other times only the 3rd 

 and 4th pairs, in addition to the anal pair, have a footing on the 

 silk. After a moult the pale colour of the larva assimilates with the 

 underside of a leaf, and here at moulting-time it is to be found, but 

 when its green colour has become brighter it returns to the uppersurface 

 of a leaf to rest. Gillmer states (in litt.) that the general habits of 

 the larvae of Apatura ilia, after hybernation, agree with those of A. 

 iris, but that, as the buds of Salix caprea unfold much earlier than 

 those of Populns tremula, the larva of A. iris commences feeding long 

 before that of A. ilia, and has made considerable progress before the 

 latter starts ; however, so rapidly does the larva of A. ilia mature 

 that it overtakes that of A. iris, pupation taking place almost exactly 



