226 
HABITS OP OUR LEPIDOPTEROUS INSECTS. 
of his account, which is published in the 1 Entomologist ’ for the 
present month (Dec., 1902). 
He obtained some living examples of the butterfly from a friend 
at Hyeres. He placed them on living plants of willow, covering 
the plants with gauze. He watched one female lay 192 eggs in 
one hatch which encircled the stem. He had five females, and 
between them they laid over 2,000 eggs (about 2,200 as well as he 
could count them), so that the complement of eggs laid by each 
female numbers between 400 and 500. The eggs were all laid in 
hatches of 150 to 250, each female laying three or more hatches. 
The larvse when hatched immediately start spinning a carpet of 
silk as they crawl away. They all, he says, did precisely the 
same, and formed a colony on the last cluster of leaves, feeding in 
company. 
Mr. Erohawk describes their proceedings and changes to the 
third moult, and the rest of his account will appear in a future 
number of the ‘ Entomologist.’ 
This butterfly, like the other Vanessa, hybernates in the perfect 
state, and has been known to hybernate in this country. 
It has been frequently noticed that insects are more abundant 
in a Summer following a hard Winter, and I think this may he 
caused by hybernating larvse being kept by the cold in a dormant 
condition, whereas if we get a spell of warm weather (as we 
occasionally do) in February, some of them are tempted to become 
active before there is any food for them to eat, and are consequently 
starved, and die. One or two of the larvse of our grass-feeding 
butterflies will come out in any mild weather during the Winter 
and nibble a little food, and then with the cold become dormant 
again, but I do not think this is the case with many. 
I ought to apologise for the fragmentary and rather disconnected 
character of these notes, but they have been put together at 
intervals of leisure as I could find time to write them. I can 
claim no originality for them, as I have gathered most of my 
information from Barrett’s splendid work on our ‘British Lepi- 
doptera ’ and from Tutt’s ‘ British Butterflies’; and I ought perhaps 
to apologise for the elementary character of some of the notes. 
