2 PAPILIO MAOHAON. 



sending me three eggs on June 4th, 1880, which he 

 had found the day before in Wicken Fen, and on the 

 12th a few more, laid on Peucedanum palustre, but 

 eventually three of these proved infertile. 



What follows is, of course, really the personal his- 

 tory of the individuals which I watched, and though 

 for convenience sake I shall generalise, and sometimes 

 use the present tense and not the past, I wish it to 

 be understood that I speak only of what I was aware 

 I saw : I know I made one omission, which will be 

 noticed in its proper place. 



The eggs hatched June 13th — 15th, the larvge in 

 every case making their first meal of the empty shell, 

 and for a day or two I supplied them with garden 

 carrot, but after that they were fed entirely on Angelica 

 sylvestris. From first to last each larva was kept 

 separate, and its changes noted in a separate record. 



The larva, on first turning its attention to its food- 

 plant, scoops out a round cell on the surface of a leaf, 

 but after a few hours takes the bolder course of eating 

 quite through from the edge of the leaf. It does not 

 roam, but continues at the same part till the third or 

 fourth day, when it moves off to some distance, and on 

 a stalk or leaf spins a few silk threads for a foot-hold ; 

 there it waits from two to three days for the first 

 moult, and when this is accomplished eats the cast 

 skin all to the head-piece, and soon after goes — appa- 

 rently by design — back to the spot where it was pre- 

 viously feeding and attacks the leaf again. At this 

 stage I noticed that if a larva found a speck of 

 " frass '' on its food, it would pick it up in its jaws, 

 stretch out its body, and somehow project the " frass " 

 away from the plant. Again, after feeding three or 

 four days it retires as before, and prepares for and 

 accomplishes its second moult, which happens on about 

 the twelfth day of its life. Similarly the third moult 

 comes on the sixteenth or seventeenth day, and the 

 fourth (the last) from the twentieth to the twenty- 

 third day, the cast skin being always eaten. After the 



