GRAPTA Y. 
ni 
This description applies well to the female Umbrosa, which alone of the sexes 
of either form can be called glaucous, this word expressing the blue-grey color 
with which the wings are suffused. It is not often used by Fabricius. In his 
Ent. Syst. I have been able to discover it but few times. One of these is used in 
describing the American species, Megistanis Acheronta, the under side of which is 
a shade of grey that nearly approaches the female Umbrosa. This latter is also 
distinguished by a row of distinct black points crossing both wings. 
I conclude therefore that the female Umbrosa is the true Interrogation's, Fab. 
This was the opinion of Godart. In Enc. Meth. IX, p. 302. he says; “Fabricius 
has taken the male for C aureum of Linnaeus and has made of the female a sepa- 
rate species under the name of Interrogationis .” 
Boisduval and Leconte give a figure copied from one of Abbot’s drawings, com- 
posed apparently of the upper surface of Fabrieii and the under surface of Umbrosa. 
The shape is rather that of the latter. These authors state that although there 
would seem to be more than one species, yet as the caterpillars are the same, the 
butterflies must be the same also. A correct conclusion from incorrect premises, 
for it is not implied that caterpillars had been proved to be the same by breeding 
from the egg, and resemblance in the larvae by no means indicates identity in 
the imago. 
The figures of Hubner are admirable, and represent both sexes of Umbrosa , 
under the name C aureum. I do not find Fabrieii anywhere figured except in 
the wood-cut of the female in Harris. 
The history of Interrogationis, and that of Ajax, illustrates the defects of the 
present system of determining genera and species, founded as it is on one stage only of 
the insect’s existence, and omitting the other three, the egg, larva and chrysalis, 
from consideration. Certainly all these stages are important, if not equally so, to 
a true conception of either genus or species. Even so minute objects as the eggs of 
butterflies, sometimes scarcely to be distinguished by the naked eye, and always re- 
quiring examination under the microscope, are found to differ generically in shape 
and ornamentation as decidedly as do the butterflies produced from them. Noth- 
ing can be more distinct than the smooth, spherical egg of Papilio, the granulated, 
lenticular egg of Parnassius, the fusiform of Pieris, the ribbed ovoid of Vanessa, 
the sculptured conoid of Argynnis, the dome-topped cylinder of Danais, or the 
semi-sphere of Pamphila. And so far as I have been able to examine the eggs of 
our butterflies, those of the same genus, besides bearing a generic resemblance, 
have each their specific differences. Thus Ajax is distinguishable from Turnus, 
or Troilus , or Fhilenor; Philodiee from Eurytheme, or Alexandra. So with 
Diana, Cybele , Aphrodite, and the Satyri and Hesperidce. 
The larvae and chysalids also fall naturally into groups, or in other words dif- 
fer generically, though genera founded upon these groupings would disarrange very 
materially many of the highly artificial divisions at present recognised. And they 
differ individually so that one need never be mistaken for another, even in such 
cases of similarity as in the larvae of I. Disippus and L. Ursula. 
But, inasmuch as the imago is the only one of the four stages that is usually 
known, the determining characters are sought in it alone, in the distribution of the 
nervures, in peculiarities of legs, palpi and antennae, form of wings and markings 
