OF WASHINGTON. 1.03 



spun, and then the larva blew out the bubbles from the anal end 

 of its alimentary canal and thrust them through the framework so 

 as to make a covering for the outside of the cocoon. The bub 

 bles were examined with a microscope, but no trace of silk could 

 be found in them. Mr. Busck stated that, in the stage before the 

 last, the larva is flat and footless ; in the last stage it has feet and 

 is round and slender. The note was discussed by Messrs. How 

 ard, Gill, and Ashmead. Dr. Howard called attention to a note 

 by Paul de PeyerimhofF in the Annals of the Entomological So 

 ciety of France, Vol. LXX, 1901, pp. 150-152, on the mechanism 

 of the hatching with the Psocidas. He w r anted to especially point 

 out that the author, in describing the peculiar habit of the issuing 

 embryo of swallowing mouthful after mouthful of air in order to 

 swell its body and assist in bursting the enveloping membrane, 

 was anticipated by H. G. Hubbard. Peyerimhoflf had been un 

 able to find any former record of this peculiar habit with the 

 Psocidae, but the speaker pointed out that Hubbard, in 1885, in 

 his masterly volume on the insects affecting the orange, on page 

 195, described this process exactly with Psocus citricola Ash- 

 mead. 



Mr. Kotinsky reported to the Society some observations he 

 had made upon the larvae of Chilocorus similis, recently brought 

 from China by Mr. Marlatt, which, he thought, might raise a 

 question as to the distinctness of this species from C. bivulnerus. 

 The larvae of similis, when in the jar in which they were reared 

 in the Department, were light colored, distinctly lighter than are 

 larvae of bivulnerus ; afterwards, when they had been exposed to 

 the light for some time in a breeding cage, they became darker, 

 so that they looked very much like bivulnerus larvae. 



Mr. Marlatt said he thought Mr. Kotinsky had stated the matter 

 rather too strongly. He thought that the change of color was 

 not clue to change in the color of the larval integument, but rather 

 to a difference in the proximity of the spines, brought about by 

 a larval moult. He believed that similis larvae differed from 

 those of bivulnerus and could be distinguished. 



Dr. Dyar read the following note : 



