45° 
The Moths and Butterflies 
Fig. 3), native in the south, but now gradually spreading north. The 
caterpillar, sometimes called “orange-puppy” in Florida, feeds on orange- 
and lemon-trees, besides other plants, and is swollen in front of the middle, 
with the anterior part of the body rusty brown with lateral stripe, the hinder 
end of which, including two or three segments and a broad saddle in the 
middle, is cream-yellow flecked with brown. 
A smaller widely distributed and well-known Papilio is the common 
Eastern black swallowtail, P. polyxenes , represented by five named varie¬ 
ties besides the type form. The black wings are crossed by two rows of 
yellow spots, the inner ones the larger, and there is a series of yellow mar¬ 
ginal lunules; incomplete bluish spots lie between the two yellow rows of 
spots on the hind wings, specially distinct and large in the female. The 
larva feeds on parsnips, caraway, etc., and is green-ringed with black and 
spotted with yellow. P. troilus, the spice-bush swallowtail of the eastern 
and middle states, has a single row of well-separated yellow spots near the 
outer margin of each wing, with indications of a bluish or greenish row inside 
this, specially distinct on the hind wings; there is an orange spot at each 
end of this row on the hind wings. The larva lives on spicewood and sassa¬ 
fras and makes a protecting nest by tying the edges of a leaf together. The 
pipe-vine swallowtail, Laertias philenor , has no band of yellow spots, but only 
a few indicated lilac-colored remnants of spots, and has the hind wings suf¬ 
fused with beautiful glossy blue-green, especially beyond the base; its cater¬ 
pillar feeds on Dutchmen’s pipe and a wild species of Aristolochia, common 
in the Appalachian forests. There are two Papilionids without tails, viz., 
Ithobalus acauda, found in New Mexico, and /. polydamas, found in 
Florida; both are beautiful butterflies, much like P. philenor in color and 
marking. 
The largest family of Rhopalocera is that of the Nymphalidae, or brush¬ 
footed butterflies, the vernacular name partly describing their most dis¬ 
tinctive structural peculiarity, namely the marked reduction (atrophy) of 
the fore legs to be functionless little hairy brush-like processes without tar¬ 
sal claws on the feet; in both sexes these fore feet lie folded on the thorax, 
“like a tippet,” as Comstock has said. This and the possession of an always 
five-branched radial vein in the fore wing are about the only structural 
characteristics common to all the butterflies of this large family. The species 
range from small to large, present a bewildering variety of coloring and pattern 
and an equal variety of larval habit and appearance. All the chrysalids 
are naked, usually angular, and are suspended head downward by the tail 
without other support. Nearly 250 species of Nymphalids are recorded 
from this country, and the majority of the best-known and most abundant 
butterflies in any locality belong to the group. Some systematists consider 
the brush-footed butterflies to form several distinct families—this is the 
