Page:Jardine Naturalist's Library Foreign Butterflies.djvu/192

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156
CHARAXES JASIUS.

singularly armed with four vertical yellow horns tipped with red, of which the two intermediate are the longest. A yellow line passes along each side of the body in the region of the stigmata, and the back is marked with four indistinct orange spots. The true feet are black, the membranous ones green. It feeds on the leaves of the strawberry tree, and never eats except during the night. Its habits are very lethargic. During day-light it remains fixed and motionless on its favourite plant, which it resembles in colour, and thus escapes observation. The chrysalis is smooth, thick, carinated, and of a coriaceous texture, the colour pale green. Two broods or flights of the perfect insect are produced each year, the first in June, the second in September. The caterpillars of the autumnal brood survive the winter, and are not transformed into chrysalids till the ensuing May. The perfect insects are then produced in about fifteen days. These speedily deposit their eggs, which are hatched in June, and after three months occupied in the usual transformations, the second flight appears in September, and continues the race in the manner above mentioned. In many parts of France the butterfly is named the Pacha with two Tails[1]"

  1. Wilson's Illust. of Zoology, fol. 27.