GENUS ARGYNNIS 129 



In ovipositing, some kinds walk about on the dead leaves and 

 rubbish under the small bushes, and push the ovipostor down in 

 among the debris and oviposit just like a grasshopper; others 

 drop their eggs while flying over suitable places. At the time 

 when the eggs are laid, the grass and small plants are all dry and 

 dead, so that there is nothing for the young larva to feed upon if 

 it should hatch. The egg is thimble shaped, white at first, but 

 turns black in twenty days, or just before hatching, and the larva 

 can be seen through the transparent shell before it is hatched. 

 In hatching, the larva eats its way through the egg-shell, de- 

 vouring all of it usually ; it then goes into lethargy without eat- 

 ing anything else, and thus it hibernates, a tiny thing, not half 

 so big as a pin-head, naked, without any cocoon or other cover- 

 ing, in the wet and frozen rubbish, till the leaves of its plant shall 

 grow in the spring, some eight or nine months of sleep. A most 

 marvelous story. 



The larvae feed on Viola, it is said, but I am sure that there 

 must be some other food-plant. Like the larvae of Parnassius, 

 the Argynnids are nocturnal, and thus the difficulty of observing 

 them is increased, and there is yet much to learn about them. 



Sex-marks : The lappets, and the abdomens ; the tip of the male 

 body is somewhat knobbed, and has a sort of fringe on upperside 

 as is well shown on Plate XIII, Fig. 115, a. The body of the 

 female is larger and tapers to a point. The female is always paler 

 than the male, except those species the females of which are black. 



106. Argynnis Nokomis. 



No figure. 

 Nokomis is a very large butterfly from Arizona; it is of the 

 same group as Leto, and might easily be mistaken for Leto ; the 

 female is of the black kind, same as Leto, there being no normal- 

 colored female. The male is somewhat redder on the upper side 

 than Leto, and the upper side of the female is rather brown than 

 black. 



107. Argynnis Nitocris. 

 No figure. 



Nitocris is another of the Arizona Argynnids that have black 

 females ; it is also of the Leto type, similar to Nokomis, but with 

 stronger and more contrasting colors, the upper side of the female 

 being blackish rather than brownish. All of these three species. 



