no. i. BOMBYCINE MOTHS OF NORTH AMERICA— PACKARD. 247 



[The following notes were made by Mr. T. Pergande at the United States Department of 

 Agriculture; they appear to indicate that the species is not altogether adapted to American 

 conditions, and that while it will feed on other plants than Ailanthus, it does so at a great 

 disadvantage. Received (Apr. 14, 1881) from S. Lowell Elliott, New York, 220 cocoons of 

 P. cynthia with the following notes: "One hundred cynihia from Ailanthus, collected last fall 

 and wintered in the house; 100 cynthia from Ailanthus, collected this spring, selected from 

 nearly 700 cocoons; the balance were dead, killed by the late warm weather last fall and the 

 succeeding cold winter. You will not obtain imagos from all of these, the past six months have 

 been very severe on all insect pupae; 20 cynthia from other trees and shrubs; you will find 

 them much smaller than those that fed on the Ailanthus. Nearly all the trees and shrubs in 

 the Central Park had the larvae of cynthia feeding on them last summer, but the caterpillars, 

 excepting those from the Ailanthus, were of small size; great numbers died before forming 

 their cocoon, and nearly all the cocoons gathered contained dried caterpillars. I found 

 Ichneumons for the first time in the cynthia cocoons gathered during the winter of 1879-80. 

 In those collected in the winter of 1880-81 I found Ichneumons had increased in number, and 

 that cynthia had been attacked by a new enemy, a Dipterous insect." 



From the cocoons received, as above, Mr. Pergande bred in May many specimens of the 

 Chalcidid parasite Spilochalcis marix (Riley). His notes are as follows: "From cocoons of the 

 above moth received from S. Lowell Elliott, New York, issued May 12, 107 specimens of 

 S. marix; of these 26 were males and 81 females, all vary greatly in size; the smallest female 

 is scarcely one-fourth the size of the largest, and the smallest males is about one-third the 

 size of the largest male, and the largest female is about twice the size of the largest male. On 

 May 13, 3 $ and 22 9 issued, and on May 19, 7 S and 9 9 ." ' 



Notes by Dr. C. V. Riley, preserved at the Department of Agriculture, describe the trans- 

 formations of P. cynthia Auctt. Eggs received from New York hatched July 15, 1869. On 

 July 20 Riley notes: "They seem to feed with equal relish on plum leaves as on those of the 

 Ailanthus;" but on July 30 he has to note: "A great number of them have died, absolutely 

 rotting on the leaves, and I only have about 12 left; of these most of them have only cast their 

 second skin, while two of them have cast their third." 



Dr. Riley has a note from J. S. Ridings, dated 1869, to the effect that the moths are 

 becoming darker in Philadelphia.] 



PHILOSAMIA PRYERI (Butler). 



Plate LXXVII, fig. 1. 



Attacus pryeri Butler, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, p. 387, No. 18, 1878. Illustrations of Lep. Het. Brit. Mus., PI. III. 

 p. 11, PI. XLIII, fig. 5, 1879. 



"Allied to A. walkeri of Felder from north China, but darker than any of the species of 

 the A. cynthia group; olive-brown, with paler borders and the usual submarginal lines; the 

 pale belt (bounding the dark angulated central line externally) white inwardly, pinky whitish 

 and diffused outwardly, with no defined intersecting stripe as in all the allied species; the 

 maggot-like markings, basal white belts, and the apical markings of primaries as in A. walkeri. 

 Expanse of wings, S 5 inches, 10 lines; 9 6 inches, 2 lines. Yokohama (Jonas)." 



[Rothschild makes it a subspecies of P. walkeri,] 



This is evidently only a climatic variety of P. cynthia; it differs, according to Butler's 

 figure, from my <? cynthia from Punjab, India, only in being darker, and in the basal line on 

 the fore wings being bent out just behind the costa, and more curved between the discal mark 

 and the base of the wing. The discal marks, extradiscal lines, and other markings are the 

 same, though the apical ocellus is not so large and distinct, and more narrowly oval, it is of 

 the same size. 



Life history. 



Eggs from Yokohama, Japan. [Larva] full fed October 11, in New York [raised by Joutel]. 

 Length 50 mm., width of head 5 mm. Indistinguishable from cynthia raised in New 

 York, so much alike Joutel saw no use in drawing it. 



1 [As to Spilochalcis marix, see also Entom. Mo. Mag., Aug. 1893, p. 194.) 



