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The Gray Hair-Streak (Uranotes melinus U-ra-no'tes)

Uranotes melinus (U-ra-no'tes mel'i-nus) PLATE XXXIII, FIG. 7, 8, 9 The vertex of the head and the tip of the antennæ are orange. The upper surface of the wings is blackish with a slight blue-gray tint; on the middle of the fore wings there is a large, faint, quadrate, cloudy spot of slightly darker scales, extending from near the costal border to cell Cu. Near the outer margin of the hind wings there is an indistinct line of bluish spots. In cell Cu, there is a large orange spot surmounting a smaller black one. The under surface is gray, with two blackish-brown lines crossing each wing, the inner line edged externally with white, and internally, at least on the hind wings, with orange scales. The large orange spot and smaller black one in cell Cu, of the upper surface are repeated. Expanse of wings one and one-fourth inches. CATERPILLAR. -Less than half an inch long and slugshaped, with very small head. The body is naked, and is reddish brown without markings.

Food-plants. The fruit and seeds of hop, hawthorn, hound's-tongue, and St.-John's-wort.

This little creature just saves itself from Quaker costume by an orange spot or two and by a frivolous white-tipped tail that looks like a curlicue. The female is particularly gay, having two white-tipped tails to her wings which are above yellowish brown in color, and below delicate yellowish gray. The gray hair-streak is a frisky little creature living up to its orange spots in action rather than to its decorous body color; it dances about shrubbery, and is much given to taking long swigs of nectar from the flowers of the bush-clover. It is a long-lived butterfly and flies from June to September here in the North, where it is double-brooded, and probably winters as a chrysalid. It occurs throughout the United States. The caterpillar lives in the pods or seeds of its food-plant, and is therefore quite destructive; it is quite as extensible as if it were made of india-rubber.