418 
LEPIDOPTEHA. 
Delias eucharis, Dr., is one of the most common and striking butter¬ 
flies of the plains ; it is white above ; the veins lightly or heavily marked 
with black; below, the apex of the forewing and hindwing are bright 
yellow between the veins, with an outer series of bright vermilion blotches 
between two black bands ; the red looks as if dabbed in with a brush 
and stands out extraordinarily sharply and crudely. This beautiful 
insect flies about in the sun and is one of our most striking butterflies. 
Aitken records its habits of laying eggs in rows and not singly as do most 
butterflies. Its larva feeds on the mistletoe ( Loranthus ), growing on 
trees and is readily reared. 
Anapheis (Belenois) mesentina, Gram., is white with fuscous mark¬ 
ings; the larva feeds upon bagnai (Capparis horrida), and the butterflies 
are common throughout the year. The pupa is green with yellow spots; 
it has a spine on the vertex, one on the dorsum and a lateral pair. 
Pieris is represented sporadically by P. brassicce, Linn., the common 
“ cabbage white, ” which is found within 100 miles of the Himalayas in 
Eastern Bengal, Behar, the United Provinces and Eastern Punjab. This 
insect is sometimes extremely abundant, coming in the cold weather in 
numbers and breeding freely on cruciferous plants. Its sporadic appear¬ 
ances are due either to the action of parasites which ultimately destroy a 
very high percentage of the larvae and check the insect apparently for 
some years, or to its sporadic migration from the hills into the 
plains. Ixias pyrene , Linn., is yellow with black and orange covering 
the apical half of the wing. Its larva feeds on Capparis sepiaria with 
that of I. mariamne, Cram. ; both are common in India in the hills 
as in the plains. Appias libythea, Fabr., is a white butterfly with dark 
markings at the edge of the wing in the male, over the apical half in 
the female. The larva was reared by Davidson and Aitken on 
Capparis horrida. 
Catopsilia includes the two common white butterflies, C. crocale, 
Cram., and C. pyranthe , Linn. Both feed freely upon the weed Chakaur 
(Cassia occidentalis) , the latter also upon the Indian laburnum (Cassia 
fistula) and are common throughout the year. 
Colias croceus, Fourc. (fieldi Men), is a beautiful orange species, the 
wings edged with fuscous and with the undersurface yellow. It is one 
of the common butterflies in the fields in the dry hot months. 
