ICHNEUMONS IN CHRYSALIDES. 31 



The black and yellow " Magpie "* of the currant, while in 

 the form of a black and yellow caterpillar, is often to be seen 

 in the same wasted predicament as its fellow-sufferer of the 

 cabbage, and, like that, surrounded by the silken cocoons of 

 its destroyers : or, supposing it arrived at its second stage, 

 that of a black and yellow chrysalis, its progress is equally 

 liable to be arrested ere it attains its third. 



Such a chrysalis we have sometimes gathered with the cur- 

 rant or plum leaves, to the back of which they are often, in 

 July, to be found attached by a slight silken net-work. Our 

 object in thus plucking them from their native trees has been 

 to watch them through the curious process of emergement ; 

 but, lo ! when we have been looking for a magpie moth, 

 curious to behold, though seen before, the gradual expansion 

 of her large white wings, with the gradual coming out of their 

 black and yellow speckles, nothing has come out at all but an 

 ugly black devil of an ichneumon-fly. 



We are not sure whether, in the above instance, the " Mag- 

 pie's " destroyer first attacked it while a caterpillar, or after it 

 became a chrysalis. Numerous, at all events, are the various 

 aurelian covers which serve only to conceal, perhaps one, 

 perhaps an assemblage of surreptitious lurkers of ichneumon 

 form, or, if differing in shape, of ichneumon habits. 



During last August, we had six of the golden chrysalides of 

 the little tortoise-shell butterfly all suspended to a cluster of 



* Abraxus grossulariata. 



