1892.] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 



coveted 9 inside the gauze. Now, if you want specimens, y<>u 

 catch them by putting the tumbler over them slipping the paste- 

 board under and transfer them to the cyanide bottle, but if you 

 want fertile eggs you shake the males from the glass into the 

 cage by the door opposite the lightest part of the horizon. After 

 the female has once paired no more males will be attracted, so 

 you must make up your mind beforehand whether it is specimens 

 or eggs you most desire. I never use a light if breeding is my 

 object, as there are scarcely any moths that will mate where a 

 light is used; this is the reason the cage is painted a dark color, 

 as you can see even in a very dim light the pale colored wings 

 of the tiny males as they flutter around and over the dark gauze. 

 Isa textula is a rare moth here, and I have rarely seen more than 

 three males attracted in one evening; a dark, still, warm evening 

 is always better for assembling, but even if it blows quite freshly 

 some of the Limacodes will be attracted provided your cage is a 

 little sheltered by trees or shrubbery, on the side from which the 

 wind is coming. With some of the Bombycidae and Sphingidae, 

 you may keep your cage in the house ; in an open window, but I 

 have never had any success with the Limacodes unless the cage 

 was in an open space away from the house. I do not see how 

 Sisyrosea inornata, however small, could ever be mistaken for 

 Isa texhda, being a very differently constructed Limacodes, a 

 very much slenderer and lighter built insect, the thorax only one- 

 tenth of an inch across while in inornata it measures half as much 

 again, and the abdomen of inornata is fully twice the size of that 

 of textula. I think it probable / textula has been confounded 

 with Limacodes flexuosa, but Dr. Packard has also identified tliis 

 for me, and my specimens are darker colored with shorter fringes, 

 narrower wings, the primaries more produced at the apex, espe- 

 cially in the 9 . The larva of S. inornata, Dr. Packard says in 

 his "Forest Insects," was first described in the Harris Corre- 

 spondence; it is one of the most beautiful of the Limacodes, but 

 though I have repeatedly had the eggs from captive frmak-s, I 

 have never yet succeeded in rearing more than two or three Ian .1 

 back again to the pupa. I, however, know its whole history, and 

 will some day write it out for the readers of K\ i o.\tm.o<;irAi. 

 NEWS. The larva bears not the slightest resemblance to that of 

 Isa textula. 



