CELASTKINA ARGIOLUS. 421 



seen.* Both broods are very fond of water, being always found on 

 damp sands at wet places and at the brookside crossings. They are also 

 often seen feeding on willow blossoms. A large series gives an uniform 

 expanse of one inch ; I can detect no difference in the markings or 

 size of the two broods. The larval foodplant of piasus is the buds of 

 Adenostoma fasciculatum, an anomalous genus, which has no repre- 

 sentative even approximate in the Eastern States. The Spanish name 

 is 'chamiso,' which is Anglicized into ' chemise.' It is a heath-like 

 plant, 4 to 6 feet high, resembling a juniper-bush more than any other 

 eastern plant. Every part of it is brittle, dry, and rather resinous, 

 burning freely when quite fresh and green. The leaves are very small, 

 round, like pine-needles, and evergreen ; they grow all along the stems 

 in little bunches or 'fascicles,' whence the specific name. The flowers 

 are minute, profuse, in dense terminal racemes on the tips of the twigs, 

 white, scarcely or not at all fragrant, though forming one of the chief 

 sources of honey in the country, and it is notable that, while the plant 

 is abundant, and flowers so profusely as to whiten the landscape, the 

 seeds have never been found. It grows upon the dry hillsides and 

 covers uncounted square miles of waste land. This plant, growing 

 at a distance from the usual haunts of piasus, is that butterfly's food- 

 plant. While the flower-buds are as yet in their merest infancy, the 

 female piasus of the first brood deposits her eggs singly on the bud 

 and between it and the stem. The female of the second-brood finds 

 the flowers in blossom. The egg is white, round, flattened, with a 

 depressed point in the centre, like other Lycamid eggs. While Adenos- 

 toma is entirely foreign to any plant in the Atlantic States or Europe, 

 it is placed by botanists in the order Bosaceae and among eastern 

 plants, those nearest it are : Alchemilla (ladies' mantle), Agrimonia, 

 and Poierium (burnet), though all of these are very unlike in 

 appearance to Adenostoma. It is possible that the buds, or the 

 immature seeds of other Rosaceous plants might feed piasus larvae, as 

 cherry, plum, strawberry," etc. Scudder (Butts, of New Engl., ii., 

 p. 945), repeats Edwards' statement tbat, "on the Pacific slope, we 

 find a new form pztfsws, mostly resembling neglecta, which, so far as 

 observations have gone, appears to be single-brooded in the north, 

 double-brooded in the south, and to show no difference between the 

 broods, as sharp a contrast as could well be found to the character of 

 the species elsewhere ; and it is the more strange, as, in Arizona 

 (though it should be noted among the mountains), an ashen-tinted 

 form of violacea occurs, to which Edwards has given the varietal name 

 cinerea. The form piasus occurs as far north as central California." 

 To us, Edwards' figs. 26 and 27, supposed to represent the ? s of two 

 broods, seem identical. They appear, on the upperside, to be almost 

 exactly like Edwards' 2 marginata (fig. 4), and certainly bear no 

 resemblance to his ? neglecta (fig. 12), which he asserts it most 

 resembles, whilst similarly his $ echo (fig. 20), which certainly is very 

 like the $ neglecta (fig. 13), carries with it a $ (fig. 21), which again 



* This intervening period appears to be the real cause for Edwards supposing two 

 broods ; Wright nowhere records breeding the insect, but he catches many; and 

 the position of San Bernardino, in the S. Bernardino branch of the Bocky 

 Mts., lends excellent support to our suspicion that here, as everywhere, the 

 February and April examples are all members of a continuous spring brood. 

 Certainly Edwards' figures indicate this. 



