HUNTING EGGS OF LEPIDOPTERS. 

 R. R. Rowley, Superintendent of Schools, Louisiana, Mo. 



The study of butterflies and moths with most of us is a pleasant diver- 

 sion, a rather harmless way of occupying our leisure summer hours, but, it is 

 true, it becomes so fascinating that we are soon driven to pursue it after 

 the manner of a business, accepting from nature imagoes and larvae as dollars 

 and cents in payment of strenuous toil. 



Like a hunter in pursuit of game, we go armed in quest of winged 

 creatures, first with a net and poison jar, but the capture of beautiful butter- 

 flies can not always quite satisfy us. We want to know more of the lives 

 and habits of the lepidopterous denizens of the woods and fields, so we add 

 to our hunting paraphernalia, tin boxes and paper bags. 



Professor Gerould and others have told us how to obtain the eggs of 

 butterflies by imprisoning the females with sprays of their foodplants, but I 

 am going to tell you how to search for them out in the woods. 



As plentiful as Papilio ajax is here, it was a long time before I could 

 secure an absolutely perfect imago and I hadn't found the grown larvae plen- 

 tiful either in June or September; but one day as I strolled along the edge of 

 a thicket I noticed an Ajax flitting just above the ground and ever and anon 

 poising for an instant over a leaf. As she zigzagged through the weeds and 

 low shrubs I followed her with my eye and marked her stopping or halting 

 places. Upon investigating I found her eggs on the tender end leaves of low 

 papaw sprouts, in most cases less than a foot above the surface of the ground. 

 I found a score of eggs in a few minutes search and quite as many freshly 

 hatched larvae. Other Ajaxes had flitted through the same little shrubs days 

 before I saw the one ovipositing. That was in early June. Later in the same 

 month I had nearly two hundred larvae feeding. 



Since then I have had no trouble finding eggs and larvae of Ajax. Of 

 course the eggs were laid on the top side of the leaf, as a rule, and are round 

 and pale green without any flowery covering powder. To trained eyes the 

 eggs of Ajax can be seen as you walk along near the papaw plants. 



I had the same difficulty with both Papilio cresphontes and turnus, but 

 when I discovered the eggs of the former on the low tender leaves of stunted 

 and grubbed hop-tree sprouts, I solved the problem, and while collecting the 

 ova of Cresphontes, I found quite as many green as egg-yolk-colored ones, 

 and later found to my surprise that I had both Cresphontes and Turnus on the 

 same foodplant. I still find the eggs and larvae of both of these species on the 

 same plants, and not uncommonly. 



For years I had sought the foodplant of Papilio philenor, but never a 

 pipe-vine could I find in the woods. Just as in the case of the female Ajax 

 I followed an ovipositing Philenor and found the slender low herb Aristolochia 

 serpentaria, a plant so insignificant that I had overlooked it. The egg as in 

 Turnus, Ajax or Cresphontes is round and on the top side of the leaf, colored 

 much as that of the latter species with the dusting or pruinescence a little 

 deeper orange. 



It is no trouble here in Missouri to find the eggs and larvae of Papilio 

 troilus on the grubbed sprouts of sassafras. Quite as easy a task is the locat- 

 ing of eggs and larvae of Papilio asterias on wild or escaped parsnip or garden 

 celery. 



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