40 
DANAIDAE 
5.30 a.m. I watched a young larva feeding on its empty 
shell ; as soon as it had finished it, it crawled away and 
found an unhatched egg close by, which it at once started to 
devour, biting through three of the keels, when I stopped it 
from doing more damage, and placed it on a terminal 
leaf of Asclepias , upon which it immediately began feeding, 
and soon perforated the entire surface. 
The larva becomes fully grown after the fourth month and 
measures 56 mm. long. The head is yellow with three trans¬ 
verse black hoop-like bands. On each side of the second 
segment is a long, fleshy, velvety black tentacle, very slender 
and cylindrical. These project over the head, are slightly 
upturned and widely divergent at the tips ; on the eleventh 
segment is a much shorter pair of similar structure. The 
ground colour of the body is pale lemon-yellow and white ; 
the white forms a median band round each segment ; the 
segments are banded and striped with velvety steel-black. 
The larva is almost continually feeding and grows rapidly, 
consequently the larval state lasts only sixteen days. 
Pupa. The pupa measures 25*4 mm. long and 127 mm. wide 
across the abdomen, is stout in proportion, rounded and remark¬ 
ably smooth, having no angles or projections. The abdomen is 
conical and terminates in a stalk-like cremaster. The whole 
formation resembles a beautiful pendant object. The ground 
colour is a pale glaucous-green ; the posterior edge of the third 
abdominal segment is beautifully adorned by a dorsal belt 
reaching to the hind margin of the wings, the knobs of which 
are tri-coloured ; the front edge is intensely black and shining, 
the hinder half of highly-polished nacreous splendour, reflecting 
the intensely brilliant gilded band on which the knobs are 
situated ; there are six other equally brilliant gilded discs 
running in an oblique line on each side from the head to the 
posterior surface of the meso-thorax, and one in the disc of the 
wing. The cremaster and anal segment are marked with black. 
The details of the entire structure are very inconspicuously out¬ 
lined. Both in colouring and structure the insect resembles a 
finely-modelled jade ornament, encircled and studded with 
highly-burnished gold. The pupa is suspended by the cremastral 
hooks to a small but dense pad of silk attached to a leaf-stalk or 
stem of the food plant. The pupal stage occupies fifteen days. 
