PIERIDAE 
3*8 
seed-pod is partly developed and forms the food of the little 
larva. But the first meal of the larva after leaving the egg 
is the empty shell, and should it happen to find an unhatched 
egg, it at once devours it. After its first meal on the 
egg-shell, the larva moves off on to the seed-pod, upon which 
it lives and feeds. During their earlier stages the larvae are 
cannibalistic. 
When fully grown after the fourth moult, the larva 
measures about 31 mm. in length ; its form is slender and 
of almost uniform thickness throughout. The dorsal surface 
is green, shading into blue-green, and finally blending into 
white on the lateral ridge, forming a conspicuous longitudinal 
white stripe ; the whole of the ventral surface, including the 
legs and claspers, is a rich and rather deep green ; the 
spiracles are white. The surface is sprinkled with warts 
varying in size, each emitting a bristle ; all are black excepting 
those situated on the white stripe, these being white. 
When the larva is ready for pupation it leaves its food 
plant and wanders away in search of a suitable site to spin 
itself up. A larva in captivity roamed about for thirty hours 
before selecting a place for the purpose. The larval stage 
occupies about twenty-five days. 
Pupa. The pupa measures, on an average, 23 mm. in 
length ; it is elongated, attenuated at each end and strongly 
concave dorsally, the wing cases bulging in the centre and 
producing an angular projection. The general shape forms a 
crescent greatly resembling a seed-pod of its food plant. 
For the first six days, the colour is much the same as the 
larva, but directly after pupating, it is green with white 
markings and remains almost unchanged for two days ; after 
then it gradually changes to a buffish hue. When over thirty 
days old, all the green colouring is replaced by olive or greenish- 
brown and the dorsal surface is tinged with pinkish and 
speckled with a dull reddish colour; the general appearance 
is pinkish-brown, with a strongly-pronounced whitish stripe. 
Such is the normal colouring of the pupa. In certain in¬ 
dividuals the colour varies considerably, and some are entirely 
of a green colour with a white lateral stripe running from the 
beak, along the margin of the wing, down the abdomen to the 
extremity ; on this stripe are placed the yellow spiracles. 
