18 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



villa, and suggested to the gardener to defer operations a few days longer. 

 The owner, not knowing of our intentions, became vexed and gave an 

 Italian labourer a bagfull of sulphur, with orders to dust the Aristolochia with 

 it effectually. How well the instruction was carried out may be inferred 

 when it is known that those plagued worms, all the remaining foliage and 

 much of the grass beneath the vines, were totally destroyed ! 



At the same time, while in expectation of an abundant supply of larval 

 food, I had collected from the bare vines, wall and fences of the yard, from 

 the passage ways of the house, and wherever they wandered in search of 

 food, some sixty hungry larvre. These were put into a lady's large bonnet 

 box, and some fifteen different food plants which grew on the premises 

 were placed therein to serve that wriggling mass of large black larvae with 

 long concolorous tubercles their immediate wants. But touch it they 

 would not. On the evening of the ninth of July my friend returned from 

 Staten Island without any food plant, and informed me of our misfortune. 

 I knew of only two more private places in this city, and another in Astoria, 

 Long Island, where Aristolochia sipho is cultivated. Not being acquainted 

 with the owners, I could not obtain a supply. 



The children of neighbours brought me numbers of my Philenor 

 larvae which had crawled into their yards and gardens. I decided to keep 

 only the largest of these famishing larva 3 , thinking to obtain a few more 

 chrysalids while waiting for a possible supply of food plant, which, how- 

 ever, did not come. All others I gave liberty to go where they pleased. 

 Many returned to the bare stem of my Aristolochia., where they nibbled 

 at the epidermis of the vines until most had perished. 



Necessity compelled the larvae I had in that bonnet box to become En- 

 tomophagous, so to speak. Not a leaf of a plant, shrub or tree,wild or culti- 

 vated, would they eat. On the nth of July I observed several of the 

 caged larvae had spun a thread of silk across their bodies and were sus- 

 pended by their anal hooks from the sides of the cage. A number of 

 other hungry larvae were attacking and devouring their own kind which 

 were helplessly " hung up " and could not escape from the onslaught of 

 these carnivorous larvse. On the next day I discovered a few chrysalids 

 suspended from the box, which during transformation had escaped attack, 

 while others were being devoured. But before they hardened sufficiently 

 to permit of removal these chrysalids, too, were attacked and converted 

 into food ! It was a disgusting and repellant sight to witness. From day 



