ORDER LEPIDOPTERA 47 



ment, I could not persuade myself that this was the natural 

 transformation of my mining larvae. I was ignorant that often 

 Ichneumon flies proceed from larvae which have themselves lived 

 in the interior of caterpillars of other larvae bigger than them- 

 selves. 



Happily a single insect of those which I had kept taught me the 

 true form that they take on; among the little Ichneumons I found 

 one insect of another form, in a word a true moth. It had cer- 

 tainly come out of the cocoons. I could have no doubt of it. 



Very long ago the smallest of moths came to be designated 

 as Microlepidoptera; the leaf -miners are the smallest of the 

 micros. In this group the early systematists adopted the 

 playful habit of appending the diminutive termination 

 ella to each name of a species. This habit has continued 

 down to this day, and has resulted in an excess of length to 

 the names of these tiny creatures. 



LIFE CYCLE 



The life cycle of these miners is completed in a year at 

 longest, 3 but many species have two or more generations 

 annually. 



The egg. The eggs of lepidopterous insects, though the 

 diversity of their form is very great, have a tendency to be 

 striated or ribbed. Frequently the micropylar area, the 

 part of the shell w T here the sperm enters to fertilize the egg, 

 is distinctly differentiated from the remainder of the egg 

 surface. If that axis of the egg which passes through the 

 micropyle is at right angles to the surface on which the egg 

 is deposited the egg is said to be of the erect type, but if it is 

 parallel with that surface it is of the flat type. In the leaf- 

 miners most of the eggs are of the flat type, but in the case- 

 bearers of the genus Coleophora the eggs are erect with the 

 micropylar axis very much shortened. The eggs of the 

 Microlepidoptera are very small, and little noticed, and for 

 that reason few have been described. 



3 Recurvaria milleri takes two seasons to mature. 



