Intelligence in Plants and Animals / Being a New Edition of the Author's Privately Issued "Soul and Immortality."

by Thomas G. Gentry

Before changing to a chrysalis, the summer larvæ sometimes turn pink, and from pink to brown, or become brown without the pink stage, although others remain white or change to rusty brown. The body contracts to about three-tenths of an inch and takes on a rounded form.

The chrysalis is dark-brown or yellow-brown, but varying in color, the wing-cases being dark or green-tinted. Two sub-dorsal rows of blackish dots are found on the abdomen, and sometimes a dark dorsal line. In the few instances in which the butterfly emerges the same season the duration of this stage is from thirty to sixty days, but most chrysalids pass the winter and mature in the spring.

NEGLECTA BUTTERFLY.
Larva Feeding on Central Florets of Actinomeris, and Guarded by Ants.

Now for a description of the butterfly. In general terms, the upper side of the wings of the male is a deep azure-blue, with a delicate terminal black border. On the apical part of the fore-wings the fringes are black, but white and barred with black on the rest of these wings and on the hind-wings. In the female the fore-wings have a broad, blackish outer border, in some examples extending along the costa, while the hind-wings have a blackish costa and a row of dark spots along the outer margin. Usually the ground-color is a lighter blue in the females than in the males. A pale silvery gray, with a silky lustre, is the color of the under side of the wings, which is relieved by a row of spots along the outer margin, each preceded by a crescent, a curved row of elongate spots across the disk of the fore-wings, and several spots on the basal part of the hind-wings, all the markings being of a pale brown color. Violacea, the so-called winter form, has the dark parts and crescents on the under side of the wings quite prominent, but they do not, either in the outer border or in the basal portion, coalesce. Pseudargiolus, the largest of the series, there being but three forms in Pennsylvania, expands one and four-tenths inches. The upper surface of the male usually has a terminal border to the hind-wings of the same shade of blue as is visible on the fore-wings, the middle area of the hind-wings being a little paler than this border on the fore-wings. On the under side of the wings the spots are much smaller than on the preceding form. Neglecta, which resembles Pseudargiolus, and has the spots on the under surface small, is a smaller form, never expanding more than one and one-tenth inches. It is a summer form when there is more than one generation in a season, ranging from Canada, through New England to West Virginia and Georgia, and occurring also in Montana and Nevada. Violacea has a more extended limit, being found in Alaska, British America, Ontario, Quebec, New England to West Virginia, and Colorado, while Pseudargiolus ranges from Wisconsin south to Tennessee, and on the east from Pennsylvania to Georgia.

HIBERNATING BUTTERFLIES.

Early in March, and often while the snow yet lingers upon the landscape, may be seen flying in and out among the forest-trees, or lazily meandering along some deserted road through a thicket, the beautiful Antiopa. Her rich crimson dress, so dark that it almost seems black, with its buff-colored, sky-dotted border, serves to distinguish her from her no less interesting, but smaller, sisters of the Vanessa family of butterflies. But the Antiopas you then see are generally ragged and shabby, which is not to be wondered at, when it is considered that it is their last year’s dresses they wear, for late in the preceding August they had their being, and all through the autumn had been exposed to a hundred misfortunes or more while seeking their living.

But with the coming of frost and of cold comes the blighting of flowers. A feeling of torpor in consequence steals over their once bouyant spirits, and into some crevice in a barn or a wood-pile or stone-heap they creep, and there sleep the winter away, till the warmth of the sun from his southward-bound journey returning sets the brown buds a-swelling, when out of their hibernating retreats they leisurely crawl for a flying stroll through the awakening trees. Slow and deliberate their movements are, as though some grave and momentous event were dependent thereon.

Never have I watched such actions, so human-like have they seemed, than the conviction has gone home to my mind that they plainly evinced a thought and a purpose, which had their origin, if not in a brain, at least in one of the several ganglions which largely make up their wonderful and somewhat complicated nervous machinery.

No matter how low in intelligence she may rank, Antiopa has nevertheless, or all experience is at fault, some general ideas of the time and fitness of things. From her gloomy abode in the wood-pile she has emerged, while all the gay butterfly world, barring a few familiar exceptions, is asleep, for a tour of investigation. Her venture is seldom ill-timed, for the violets have preceded her, and from their delicately curved flagons proffer her food and refreshment.