106 
AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
on the first segment of the body. When about to change, it selects 
a place under a leaf, branch, or fence, where it spins a small spot of 
silk, to which it suspends itself by its hind-legs; the 6kin of the fore 
part of the body then splits open, and the chrysalis makes its appear- 
ance, also hanging suspended by means of several small hooks, with 
which the end of the tail is furnished, and which, during the disen- 
gagement of the skin, becomes entangled in the silk. 
The chrysalis is about seven-tenths of an inch in length, of a pale, 
whitish-green, containing black marks and brilliant metallic, golden 
spots. These chrysalides, however, together with those of the great 
American frittellary butterfly, are often destroyed by the larvas of a 
small fly. „ , , 
The butterfly makes its appearance in summer in a tew days, and 
measures from two inches and a half to three inches across the 
expanded wings. It is of a bright chesnut-brown, barred and 
spotted with black. 
GREAT AMERICAN FRITTELLARY 
( Agraulis vanilla.) 
The caterpillar (PI. IX. fig. 10) of this butterfly is of a light chest- 
nut-brown color, with a dark, longitudinal stripe down each side, 
and is shaded with black below the spiracles. It measures about an 
inch and a half in length, and is covered with sharp, thorny spines; 
two spines are also found upon the top of its somewhat squaie-shaped 
The chrysalis, which is shaded with brown and drab, is about an 
inch and a tenth in length, and hangs suspended by the tail from 
trees, shrubs, and fences. 
The butterfly measures from two inches and three-fourths to three 
inches and a fourth across the wings; the upper sides of which are of 
a bright rich chesnut-brown, spotted and marked on the veins with 
black. The under-side is beautifully marked with large, metallic, 
silver spots. ANXS . 
Whenever the plants are infested with cotton-lice, (aphides,) 
myriads of small ants may be seen running hurriedly up and down 
the stems and leaves, or leisurely moving amongst the lice, quietly 
tapping first one and then another with their antennae, or feelers, and 
occasionally making a dead halt where they find a sufficiency of this 
insect food. Many planters suppose that these ants are the parents 
of the lice; others again suspect them of destroying the aphis; 
neither of which, however, is the case, as the ants merely visit the 
colonies of lice to devour the sweet, gummy substance that exudes 
from the tubercles on the bodies of the aphides, and which is com- 
monly called “honey-dew,” from the erroneous impression that it is 
formed in the atmosphere, and then deposited in the form of dew 
upon the upper surface of leaves. This honey-dew, however, is a 
sweet liquid, ejected from the anal tubercles of the cotton-louse, and 
elaborated in its own body, from the sap which had previously been 
