224 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



species as pupate on or just beneath the surface of the ground. They 

 have to be cared for during the long, hot summer, as well as the autumn 

 and winter, and to keep the safe middle course between the Scylla and 

 Chaybdis of drought and of the dampness which would promote the 

 equally fatal mould, requires the most careful attention. The annual 

 brooded species which later fold or mine the leaves, or feed in the fruit 

 capsules of various plants, or bore the stems, are comparatively easily 

 reared, with a few exceptions. It was a number of years before I suc- 

 ceeded in obtaining the moth from an interesting larva which fed in the 

 capsules of Pentstemon. This was owing to the peculiar change of habit 

 during hibernation. After eating ail the seeds from both divisions of the 

 capsule, it would thoroughly line one all with silk, after cutting an apera- 

 ture for escape, and ensconce itself, as might reasonably be supposed, for 

 its winter's sleep. But no ; the neatly lined cell was only a temporary 

 abode, which, during the inclemency of mid-winter, was to be deserted 

 for an entirely different one. Where, in the state of nature, I have not 

 yet been able to discover. In my rearing jars it perished, year after 

 year, to my inexpressible disappointment, until finally I wintered a num- 

 ber out of doors in a small wire cloth box closed with a cork. From this 

 collection I at last obtained the moth — a beautiful Conchylis — from a 

 larva that had bored into and transformed within the cork. But for two 

 or three years I had only the single specimen, and next to the aggravation 

 of utter failure I rank the possessor of an unknown unique. It may be 

 new, and if sent to a specialist he will generally feel somewhat aggrieved 

 if you reserve the right of description and further impose upon him the 

 duty of returning the specimen. Then there is the danger of its destruc- 

 tion, either in the mail or express, to be braved, and yet, so long as one 

 does not know the species, or be assured that it is new, one never can 

 take full satisfaction in having bred it. 



Last year I had the satisfaction of obtaining nearly a dozen imagines 

 of the Conchylis in question by providing a number of bits of pith and 

 cork in which the larvae bored after their desertion of the capsules where 

 they had fed. 



Wherever I can make satisfactory arrangements for keeping track of 

 them, I winter my Micro-larv?e and pupse out of doors. Such species as 

 bore the pith of stems are very easily cared for, and leaf miners and 

 Webbers I enclose on the surface of the ground, in some sheltered situa- 



