158 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



The moth from which the above description is taken was bred from a 

 larva taken from an apple tree about fifty miles north of here, May 28th, 

 1877. It was at that time an inch long, gray, banded transversely with a 

 number of white lines. It moulted June 6th, when all but one of the 

 white lines were replaced by brown, the ground color remaining the same. 

 After feeding a few days longer, it entered the ground and transformed 

 to a chrysalis as above. At this time it was about an inch and a half 

 long. The imago appeared March 27th, 1878. 



ON THE EMERGENCE OF LEPIDOPTERA FROM THEIR 



COCOONS. 



BY C. E. WORTHINGTON, IRVING PARK, ILL. 



In the years 1856 and 1857 Capt. Thos. Hutton communicated to the 

 London Entomological Society (Trans, v., 85) and to the Journal of the 

 Agri-horticultural Society of India (ix., 167-9) certain observations on 

 the means employed by the imago of Actias selcne in obtaining exit from 

 its cocoon. In 1857 Messrs Horsfield and Moore in their catalogue of 

 the Lepidoptera in the Indian Museum, quote and endorse Capt. Hutton's 

 observations, and in the course of their remarks indicate indirectly that 

 the same methods are employed by Antherea pap/ua, an Indian Attacian 

 allied to our T. polyphettius. 



In these articles the hooks on the wings and the drop of acrid liquid 

 on the head are both noticed and the conclusion arrived at that the means 

 employed are both chemical and mechanical. Capt. Hutton, however, 

 states that the moth discharges this liquid from the mouth and applies it 

 with the brush on the forehead — apparently an error, as the structure of 

 the mouth parts would hardly admit of the secretion of such a liquid, and 

 when secreted it could hardly be conveyed to the forehead. 



On reading these notes it occurred to me that I had noticed that 

 examples of polyphemus emerging from cocoons from which the top had 

 been removed invariably carried a drop of brown liquid on the frontal 

 tuft, and a little investigation convinced me that the liquid, so far from 

 being secreted by the mouth, was contained in a cell underlying the con- 

 spicuous greenish spot on the pupa. This cell is ruptured from the top 



