THE EGG AND LARVA OF HESPERIA JUBA BDV. 
A. W. LINDSEY 
During the last two weeks of June and early in July, 1922, 
while the writer was collecting in Modoc County, California, 
juba was on the wing in large numbers. The females were much 
more numerous than the males, and the prospect of adding a 
life history of this fine species to our scanty knowledge of the 
early stages of the Hesperioidea seemed good. Most of the 
specimens collected, however, were taken on the flowers of a 
small composite which grew on a dry hillside, and no eggs were 
obtained until June 29, when a female was observed to place one 
on a blade of grass at the edge of a small irrigation ditch. This 
was in a hay field, and the grass was so immature that it could 
not be identified — a matter which proved immaterial, since the 
larva ate every species offered to it. Only the one egg was 
secured. It gave promise of furnishing the complete life history, 
but the necessity of transporting the larva at the end of the 
season proved fatal. It ate grasses found at Los Angeles, almost 
5000 feet lower in altitude than its native region, and passed 
its fourth moult in that city, but was then attacked by a mold 
which caused its death. 
Little work of a soundly scientific character has been done on 
the larvae of the Hesperioidea, hence these notes must be re- 
garded as a pioneer attempt to use the results obtained in the 
study of other lepidopterous larvae. Prominent among such 
studies are the recent writings of Mr. Carl Heinrich of the Na- 
tional Museum on the larvae of microlepidoptera. An attempt 
has been made to follow these papers in the study of the head 
capsules of the juha larva, and Heinrich^s use of Dyar^s system 
of nomenclature of the primary body setae has also been adopted 
in preference to the rather elaborate method of Fracker.^ 
1 Fracker, S. B., Class. Lep. Larvae. 1915. 
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