48 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



reading the interesting articles on the organs of pseudargiolus by Mr. W. 

 H. Edwards, I mentioned this matter to him, and he at once proposed to 

 test it this season. But the disease that, as I mentioned, had attacked 

 the larvae, evidently a species of Muscardine, left few survivors, and but 

 five males could be found. These, with some pressed organs, I forwarded 

 to Mr. Edwards, who sent them to Dr. Hagen, at Cambridge. 



In a letter from the Doctor, October 15th, he mentions that he was 

 sure he had seen an account somewhere of similar organs, but from lack 

 of time had no opportunity to look it up till then. He found that in 

 Psyche, Cambridge, No. 6, October. 1S74, Mr. H. K. Morrison has 

 described just the same organs in Leucarctia acrcea, and similar ones in 

 Agrotis p/ecta, Euplexia lucipara and Dana is erippus. In Psyche, No. 35, 

 March, 1877, Mr. B. P. Mann read extracts from a letter of Fritz 

 Mueller to Charles Darwin, published in Nature, vol. x., page 102, 

 respecting the presence and character of abdominal appendages in several 

 glaucoped moths, similar to those described by Mr. Morrison. Dr. 

 Hagen adds : " The fact is indeed very interesting and new for Cat- 

 limorpha." * 



In capturing the Callimorphas, which fly with a heavy darting motion 

 but a few yards at a time, it often occured that on corning to the place 

 where one had settled, no trace of the moth was to be found, it having 

 continued its flight ten or fifteen yards further under the high weeds on 

 which the larvae feed, Eupatorium ageratoides. These seemed to be 

 double flights, but in the summer of 1877, when sugaring at dusk, I was 

 accompanied a long distance by a male Callimorpha in a steady flight 

 among the-weeds, either following the light or the odor of sugar, and it 

 finally lit on the trunk of a tree, where I captured it, very much to my 

 surprise when I found what it was. 



It is plain that by the aid of these appendages they are able to make 

 a sustained flight in search of females or in escaping pursuit. The tails 

 issue from the sides of the segment next the anal, somewhat underneath, 

 slowly on pressure, but collapse instantly when freed, and come out of the 

 detached body even on pressing the next segment to them, and on the 

 dried males two side tufts of hair can be plainly perceived. They seem 

 to furnish the same assistance to flight as the tails of Luna, the Papitios 

 and others do. That Agrotis and other darting moths have similar organs 

 is very plausible ; where there is a want, there is a way, in nature ; where 

 a superfluity, it is dispensed with, like the blind eyes of cave fishes. 



