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The Wanderer (Feniseca tarquinius)

Feniseca tarquinius (Fe-nis'e-ca tar-quin'i-us) PLATE XXXVI, FIG. 1, 2 This butterfly can be readily distinguished from all other Lycænids in our fauna by the fact that vein M, of the fore wings coalesces with radius for a considerable distance beyond the apex of cell R + M. The upper surface of the wings is dark brown, with a large, irregular orange-yellow patch on the disk of the fore wing, and one of the same color next the anal angle of the hind wing.

CATERPILLAR.-Length about half an inch; body rather pointed at the ends and wide in the middle. Color brown marked with brownish stripes.

Food.-Woolly plant-lice, especially those on the alder. If there is a place in this world more replete with contentment than a path by an alder-fringed brook we have failed to find it; and when we wander along such a path we always look out for our fellow wanderer, the little copper butterfly with dark blotches on its wings. We usually find it either dashing about in quick, nervous flight above the alders, or resting on a leaf with wings expanded taking a sun bath, a special butterfly luxury. The wanderer is a good and helpful friend of the alders, and it plays about one selfsame spot all its little life. There are a great many kinds of blight in this world; there are blighted hopes and blighted hearts, but an alder blight consists of plant-lice that are covered with a white woolly secretion. These little creatures thrust their beaks into an alder stem and suck the juice at their leisure; they live in compact colonies so that the alder stem looks as if it were wound with wool. The little butterfly mother selects a stem so infested and lays her eggs upon it; from these eggs hatch wee caterpillars that start at once on their career of slaughter. When among the aphids the caterpillar weaves about itself a silken covering to protect it from being trod upon by the aphids and to provide a secure place for molting; to this silk the wool of the destroyed aphids clings and completely hides from view the little butcher. When not among the aphids and passing from one colony to another it spins no such tube to cover itself. If the alder stem is jarred the caterpillar will detach itself from the mass of aphids and drop to the ground; or let itself down for a little distance by a thread of silk, a habit not common among butterfly caterpillars. Perhaps it does this to save itself from its inveterate foes, the ants, which attack fiercely any depredator they find working havoc with their flock of milch cows, the aphids. It seems to be to escape the ants that this caterpillar hurries through its life stages, molting only three times. The chrysalis looks like the head of a minute monkey. There are three broods of the wanderer in the North, and it winters as a chrysalis. It is found from Maine to northern Florida and westward to Kansas. "Whose butterfly," I said, " are you, And what sweet thing do you pursue?'' STODDARD.