Znning,,.-] NATURAL HISTORY OF VICTORIA. ^Insects. 



trees, and as they were too strong and tough to be opened, and 

 were perfectly closed, it was taken for granted they were cocoons 

 containing pupae only, when put in his pocket ; and no more was 

 thought of the matter until they created a commotion in the 

 drawing-room soon after by crawling actively out over the head 

 and dress of my inquisitive fi-iend ; none of the older residents in 

 the room having ever seen the living larvae, or suspected their 

 existence in the well-known cases — so vigilant and timid are the 

 catei-pillars in retreating at the approach of danger. A curious 

 mistake is made by Mr. Westwood in describing the emergence of 

 the male pupae from the " apex " of the cases of some species allied 

 to the present one. The fact is that the escape is alwaj's from the 

 base or posterior aperture of the case, and not from the " apex " or 

 anterior aperture, through which the head of the larvae protrudes 

 when walking or feeding. In both sexes the larva, when full grown 

 and about to assume the pupa state, closes up the anterior aperture 

 of the case and fastens it firmly to a branch or trunk of a tree ; the 

 male larva then turns itself upside down and assumes the pupa 

 condition with its head where its tail used to be, close to the pos- 

 terior or lower unattached end of the case, through the opening 

 of which, when the time for emergence of the moth arrives, it 

 pushes the anterior half of its length, by a slight elongation and 

 contraction of the body, which, from the backward inclination of 

 some small sharp spines on some of the rings, is in this way forced 

 out head foremost, in the same manner as the pupae of the Goat- 

 moths and the large Swifts are made to emerge from the timber and 

 the earth when the moth is about to escape, and leaving similarly 

 the empty pupa skin sticking half out of the case. As the females 

 never leave the case, they do not turn over like the males, but 

 assume the pupa state with the head up, in the same position they 

 occupied as larvae, and with the posterior end of the abdomen close 

 to the aperture in the posterior or lower free end of the case. I 

 have no dou])t that a very curious observation of Mr. Kershaw, one 

 of the Taxidermists in the Melbourne National Musemn, is peifectly 

 true as applied to some at least of the species of these Case-bearing 

 Moths, namely, that the femnle imago neve?' emergex from the pupa 

 case at all^ but this hardened covering spHtting open for a short 



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