This is the most common butterfly of the Pyrameis genus found in the Islands. It is similar in colouring to the last described, but it has a much broader red oblique indented stripe on the fore-wings. The white apical markings are not so many or large, and it has no blue spots on the tips of the fore-wings.
The habits and locality of the caterpillar and chrysalis are so like those of the Atalanta, that description is not needed.
In rearing many specimens, two butterflies proved to have bright yellow on the hind-wings in place of the red band. Whether they are a distinct variety or not, cannot at present be positively stated.[5]
[5]See [Appendix C.]
PYRAMEIS CARDUI.
Plate II.—Fig. 5.
This insect, which is the English Painted Lady, might at first sight be taken for a faded Atalanta. The caterpillar lives generally solitary on hollyhock, nettle, or mallow, curling itself up in a leaf It is of a grey-brown colour, thickly sprinkled with hairs, a yellow line fringed by reddish dots runs along each side. It is found in most localities up to a considerable elevation, from February till well on into the summer. The butterfly is of a tawny red colour, shading off to brown at the base of the fore-wings, with dark markings and oblong black spots. The apex of the wings is marked and edged in white, similar to the Atalanta. The hind-wings are of the same tawny red colour, having a line of five round black spots running along each lower margin. The fore-wings are marked on the under-side as above, the colour, however, being redder. The hind-wings are pale buff, olive brown, and white, having four or five blue-black eyes near the lower margin, the two centre eyes being smaller than the others, which are circled by black and white. Its flight is very swift, and its erratic and rapid gyrations from side to side make it a difficult specimen to net.
PYRAMEIS v. HUNTERA.
Plate II.—Fig. 4.