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ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



dom permitted to attain their normal size and never to produce 

 a numerous colony. Only the wonderful vitality of the Opuntia 

 saves it from complete extinction at Crescent City and elsewhere, 

 yet thanks to its recuperative powers it remains there, as elsewhere, 

 one of our commonest plants. The larva of Melitara mines and 

 burrows in the succulent pulp of the pads, working in companies, 

 large or small, according to the abundance of food, and excavat 

 ing chambers without cutting through the silicious rind. Usually 

 each pad is entirely eaten out before the caterpillars enter the next 

 joint, but as their operations promote various destructive processes 

 in the pulp, such as rot and fungi, the destruction of the part at 

 tacked is rapid and the caterpillars are often obliged to cut an 



FIG. 6. Egg-staff of Melitara prodenialis attached to leaf of Opuntia, enlarged, a, 

 two eggs from the middle of the staff, greatly enlarged. 



exit and seek food elsewhere. The abandoned pads when perfo 

 rated soon dry up and become lurking places for a weevil, Acalles 

 hubbardi, whose larvae feed upon the fermenting parenchyma 

 and complete the work of destruction begun by the moth. When 

 full grown the caterpillars leave the plant and transform in the 

 sand beneath the prostrate pads. The moths appear about the 

 end of April or first of May at Crescent City and are nocturnal 

 in habit. 



The method of placing the eggs one on top of the other to form 

 a stick has already been mentioned in a note by Dr. J. B. Smith 

 (Entomological News, vol. 3, p. 208), but the details of the 

 construction are so curious that I have thought them worthy of a 

 more extended notice. It will be seen from the drawing here 

 presented (fig. 6) that the mass of superimposed eggs form a 

 long cylinder, not straight, but sinuously curved and bearing a 

 wonderfully realistic resemblance to a slender geometrid caterpil 

 lar in the attitude it assumes when alarmed, with its body ex 

 tended free from the plant, to' which it clings only by its anal 

 prolegs. The eggs, closely united and flattened, form cylindrical 



