Packard.] 
98 
[May 7, 
forked spines. But this is an evanescent feature, not persisting in 
the second stage. 
In the first stage of Platysamia cecropia , whose integument is 
dark, there is a pale shield rather larger than that of H. io , and 
supporting the large spines, but none is to be observed in stage i of 
the other large Attaci and there is none in the earliest stage of 
Eacles, Sphingicampa, or Anisota. 
There is no cervical shield in the Lasiocampidae, nor in the Li- 
paridae, but we meet with evanescent traces of one in the earliest 
stages of arctian larvae. Thus in Hyphantria textor there are two 
widely separated piliferous protlioracic warts, larger than those on 
the succeeding segments, but in Arctia virgo and Spilosoma virgin - 
ica the two piliferous warts are united into a single small pilifer- 
ous plate. In Halesidota caryce there is a broad but very short 
cervical shield, which in the next stage becomes divided, but re- 
united in the third stage, and the history of this plate in /Seiarctia 
echo is one of some interest. In stages i and n, the plate is small, 
irregularly crescent-shaped, and there are no traces of a median 
suture ; but in stage iit, a slight suture appears, showing a ten- 
dency to division into two separate warts. In stage iv, the plates 
become divided, there being two separate warts ; in the next stage, 
they curiously split apart, so that there are four transverse warts, 
while in the sixth and last stage they have changed in form and 
position becoming rounded piliferous warts, arranged in a trans- 
verse slightly curved line. 
Mr. Poulton notices and figures an evanescent small cervical 
shield in stage i, of Sphinx convolvuli, and also in the penultimate 
stage. 
The development of a prothoracic shield in Rhopalocera appears 
rto be quite arbitrary. From an examination of Scudder’s plates 
of the first stages of butterfly larvae it appears that out of eight Hes- 
perian larvae all but one have a well developed cervical shield. 
Hone are to be seen in the figures of Papilionidae (including Pierinae). 
Of five Lycaenidae, one alone ( Thecla liparops) has a shield. Of 
fifteen species of Nymphalidae, only three appear, so far as the 
sketches indicate, to have a well marked cervical shield. A small 
one is present in Melitcea harrisii , and there is a minute rudimen- 
tary one in Argynnis aphrodite; but in Speyeria idalia , it is larger 
and . better developed than usual, forming a transverse oblong plate. 
