62 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



on the anal extremity and bend until the head rests against the wall of the 

 gallery. Length, 25 mm.; emergence Sept. 23rd to Oct. 10th. The habits 

 of maritima have been extensively observed, for it is so easily located, and 

 its near-by occurrence has placed it conspicuously before the writer, during 

 the fifteen years following its first discovery. Yet in all this time there has 

 never been seen a single moth at large, though they breed within a few 

 hundred yards of windows, where for many years all comers to light were 

 welcome. At sugar, at electric light, or gas lamp, never a specimen ; it 

 would remain unknown to us still if we had never lifted the lid of a 

 breeding-box. This secretive and inactive condition becomes conspicuous 

 when it can be said thousands of larvce have no doubt been noticed in this 

 Rye locality and hundreds of the moths reared without serious effort. 

 Like their congeners, they are very punctual in their date for emergence 

 each year, and a glance at the calendar will note the day for gathering a 

 supply of the ripe pupa 1 . Still their concerted emergence will be influenced 

 by weather conditions to some extent ; a warm sunny day following the 

 cold or wet conditions that appear in early fall will find them coming out 

 in numbers, most notably in the evening hours, between eight and ten. 



The food-plant is Heliaiitlnts giganteus, and it makes an admirable 

 plant for the operations of a boring larva. While there is ample stem, 

 wherein such examples as cataphrada and others are wont to extensively 

 tunnel when they happen to select it, maritima works only at the base, 

 and the plant which is growing rapidly at the time of the intrusion coun- 

 terbalances the effect by the formation of a large gall directly above the 

 root. These ovate swellings, sometimes more than twice the diameter of 

 the plant, and an inch and a half across, give easy intimation of the larval 

 presence. An old and vigorous root clump may frequently harbour eight 

 or ten larvae, and usually the last year's galls may be also seen, though a 

 single stem is never tenanted by more than one. And while this gall 

 formation is an individual feature of the species, it is the neat door they 

 prepare for the emergence of the moth that has always interested the 

 writer. The last act of the larva before the final ecdysis is to gnaw a 

 U-shaped opening through the walls of the gall to the epidermis, which is 

 left intact, except that around the lower periphery minute perforations are 

 made. None are made across the top, however, and in a few days this 

 skin becomes dry from receiving no sap, shrinks a little and breaks free at 

 the bottom, while it hangs very nicely from the top where no perforations 

 were made. Without this door the moth could not possibly escape, and 



