40 MR. CURTIS ON A NEW SPECIES OF SAW-FLY. 



the circumstance, I sent you some specimens, which I helieve were dead before you got 

 them, owing to your absence from home. Last year they again appeared, and I then sent 

 you those from which you have so fortunately been able to obtain the perfect fly. 



" I have not, as you know, been much at this place of late years, and therefore it is 

 possible they may have existed here before 1846; but I am sure when I was more at 

 Putney, from 1840 to the end of 1843, there were none of them to be found, although the 

 plant was then in the same place as at present. They have never killed the plant, although 

 they have often eaten up all its leaves and tender fibres. It is now the 8th of June, and 

 none have as yet shown themselves this spring." 



By a subsequent letter, however, I find that on the 14th Lord Goderich noticed them, 

 but in smaller numbers than in previous years. 



The caterpillar has 22 legs, viz. 6 pectoral, 14 abdominal, and 2 small anal feet : it is 

 of a pale greyish green, shagreened, with very narrow transverse folds, and there is a slight 

 tint of ochre about the fourth segment and towards the tail, with an indistinct greyish fine 

 down the back : the head and six horny pectoral legs are deep black and shining : there is 

 a double row of minute black dots down the back, formed of short spiny tubercles, with 

 a row of similar dots down each side, as well as along the spiracles, which are black, and 

 the folds of the thighs are freckled with minuter spines (2, 2) : the trunk or fore-part looks 

 dilated when viewed from above ; these larvae were nearly f of an inch long on the 28th 

 of June, when many of them had cast their last skins, which were left sticking to the 

 leaves (fig. 3), and they disappeared in succession, burying themselves from 2 to 4 inches 

 deep in the earth, where they formed small oval cocoons like a coating of glue, but often 

 perforated in places (fig. 4). 



In the present year I had the satisfaction of breeding a male fly on the 30th of April ; 

 on the 3rd of May another hatched, and also two females, and these were succeeded by 

 several more of the latter sex which emerged from their tombs. They were as black as 

 ink, and appear to be allied to Selandria fuliginosa of Schrank ; but the male antenna? 

 approach those of Cladim, and altogether these Saw-flies are different from any I have seen. 

 The entire body is shining black ; the male being smaller than the female (fig. 11) : the 

 head is transverse, with two lateral eyes, and three ocelli on the crown, forming a slightly 

 depressed triangle (fig. 5) : the mouth (fig. 6) is composed of a semicircular, ciliated la- 

 brum (a), of two bifid mandibles (b, b), of two elongated maxillae (c, c), towards the extre- 

 mities of which are attached long, slender, pubescent palpi, composed of six joints, the 

 basal one short, the remainder tolerably equal in length (figs, d, d) : the mentum is small, 

 producing a nearly orbicular, tripartite, membranous labium (fig. f) ; from the superior 

 angles of the chin arise the short labial palpi, which are stout, pubescent and 4-jointed, 

 the third and fourth joints the stoutest, the latter slightly notched at the apex (figs, g, g). 

 Antennae 9-jointed ; those of the male (fig. 7) are nearly as long as the body, filiform and 

 densely ciliated internally ; the basal joint is short and ovate ; second subglobose ; third 

 elongated, clavate, the following rather longer; the apical joint slender, incurved and 

 pointed : in the female they are nearly as long, but more slender, and not ciliated, but 

 pilose : the abdomen is elongate-ovate and the apex bilobed in the male ; stouter and conical 

 in the female, the testaceous ovipositor being received into a groove beneath : the ample 



