HELIODES ARBUTI. 83 



HELIODES ARBUTI. 



Plate C, fig. 4. 



It is with extreme gratification that I now find 

 myself giving the history, from the egg, of this little 

 sun-loviog species, which I owe to the most kind and 

 persevering help I had the pleasure to receive from 

 Mr. H. T. Stainton in 1880, and again in 1881. 



In the former year, on the 23rd of May, I received 

 a cluster of about eight eggs, resulting from a mori- 

 bund female after being a short time in a killing bottle 

 of poison, but long enough, as it proved, to have de- 

 stroyed their vitality. 



On the 26th of the same month I was elated on 

 receiving alive five captured examples of the moths ; 

 as two of them were females I imprisoned them and 

 the most lively male together in a pot containing 

 sprays of Gerastium glomeratum and 0. vulgatum, 

 covered with leno, whereon they were occasionally fed 

 with a drop of sugar and water, which the male 

 imbibed plentifully, the females less often, and one of 

 these soon left the leno and alighted on the Gerastium, 

 and sat there with extended antennae and wings gently 

 vibrating as though intending to lay. The next day 

 was dull and cloudy, and the two on the leno only 

 flew around whenever a chance ray of sun gleamed on 

 them, but late in the afternoon they made me hopeful 

 of success when I saw they had paired about halfway 

 down on the side of the pot, where they remained five 

 hours and a half together ; they were fed for five more 

 days and fresh Gerastium added, but in vaiu, as they 

 died without either female depositing even a single 



egg- 

 As a forlorn hope, I squeezed from the abdomen of 



the gravid and dead female several eggs ; and after a 



few days I fancied one of them at least was changing 



colour, and in the afternoon of June 7th this one 



really began to hatch, and while noting down its 



