GENERAL NOTES. 
The leaves of vegetation, especially in the tropics and where it is subjected to much 
cutting and lopping, seem to vary greatly in form and habit in the same species ; locality and many 
other influences tending to alter the character of a plant. Often the very same branch will bear 
full-sized leaves of three or four entirely different characters : some simple, others lobed ; in some 
the edges serrated or crenulated, in others entire. Some individuals seem always to produce small 
leaves, whereas others have them so large as to render it difficult to recognise the same plant. 
Often it is anything but easy for the breeder of larvae to match a foodplant with certainty in the 
absence of the flower, yet however alike the plants may be the larvae will refuse anything but their 
proper food. Nor does the butterfly seem much perplexed in distinguishing the special plant on 
which to lay her eggs, though she examines it well, apparently by touch, possibly scent also or both. 
The £ of most butterflies when courting the $ hovers a little above and slightly behind 
her, rising and falling alternately, the $ meanwhile sitting on a leaf or twig, usually with open wings 
laid flat on the leaf; after some time the $ often flies to another resting-place, pursued by the 
and these tactics are frequently repeated. Sometimes, perhaps when the $ wishes to avoid the 
the two fly up into the air, mounting higher and higher, the $ indulging in aerial evolutions about 
the $, who generally flies steadily. 
Eggs are apparently laid the next day after coition, which seems to last several hours ; 
some butterflies appear to lay a few eggs one day, a few the next and so on till all are deposited ; 
but those which lay their eggs in batches perhaps lay them all in one day. Those which lay on the 
underside of a leaf generally rest on the upperside and curve the abdomen beneath. Eggs blacken 
just before the larva eats its way through the shell, or the dark head of the larva can be discerned 
through the top of the egg. Usually eggs hatch very early in the morning. The head in newly- 
hatched larvae is very large in proportion to the body. 
During its lifetime a larva undergoes from four to seven moults or changes of skin as it 
grows too large for its old envelope ; the old skin splitting along the back of the anterior segments 
and the larva gradually withdrawing its body from the abdominal portion of the skin : a series of 
undulations keep on passing through the body from tail to head. A certain liquid or secretion 
seems to aid this operation by gumming the anal portion of the old skin to the surface of the leaf 
or twig on which the larva is moulting. For a day or two before moulting the larva loses its 
bright colouring, shortens, thickens and becomes wrinkled, and has sudden contractile and 
lengthening movements, also ceasing to feed. After a moult the new skin is very fresh and 
bright, and often for several hours coloured and marked quite differently to its normal appearance, 
but this it resumes shortly. 
For some time before actual pupation the larva loses its bright colouring entirely, and 
again becomes shorter and thicker, ceases to feed and rids itself of all excremental matter in the 
body. It is usually exceedingly restless and travels up and down till it finally decides on a spot 
suitable for its transformation. In the case of a Nymphalid larva a button of silk is spun on the 
