180 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



postulate, that insects could have no knowledge of death. The reader 

 will notice how ingenuously " dogmatic " is disposed of by this change of 

 base. Now, as to what he doubts not is the main point, that is, " the 

 keeping still," that is only what these insects do, a mere act, and one to 

 which even Mr. Grote himself attaches a motive, "the approach of 

 danger." But why "keep still" on the " approach of danger " ? His 

 answer cannot be surmized. Writers have expressed various opinions 

 about this " keeping still," " death mimicry," " feigning death," as 

 practiced by certain insects and other animals, but I have not seen 

 any statement that they can have no knowledge of death, except 

 that claimed by Mr. Grote and a similar one in a Pittsburg news- 

 paper. Dr. Lindsay, in his work " Mind in Animals," in treating of 

 death-feigning, says : " This must require great self-command in those 

 that practice it ; " while Professor James, of Harvard College, in an 

 article in Popular Science Monthly, June, 1SS7, on "Some Human 

 Instincts," says : "It is really no feigning of death at all and requires no 

 self-command. It is simply a terror paralysis, which has been so useful 

 as to become hereditary." In commenting on this the newspaper man 

 makes the remark I took exception to, my notice of which, without at the 

 time being able to state where I had derived it, brought out Mr. Grote, 

 whom I would most assuredly have quoted had I been aware of his 

 assertion. John Hamilton, Allegheny, Pa. 



Arzama obliquata, g. and r. 



Dear Sir : In reference to Mr. Moffat's remark in the July number 

 of the Canadian Entomologist, that the larva of this moth does not 

 always form its pupa in the reed, I wish to say that I have taken 

 between fifty and seventy-five chrysalids this spring, and all of them were 

 in the reeds where the larva had been feeding. I believe that the larva 

 sometimes goes out of the reed and wanders in other directions before 

 going into pupa, but this is not often the case. My friend, Mr. Doll, when 

 breaking an old cedar stump apart last spring, found in it the chrysalis of 

 A. obliquata, but the larva had been feeding in the stump. Could that 

 have been the case in Mr. Moffat's instance ? 



Hermann H. Brehme, Newark, N. J. 



Mailed September 1st. 



