GONOMETA POSTICA. 313 



the western end of the Amatola hills at Pirie. On 

 many of the branches the large cocoons were to be 

 seen either in a fork or attached to the stem. I 

 collected a number of the larvae, ^which in a few 

 days span up. In spite of their thick woolly coat, 

 many of them had evidently been attacked by some 

 ichneumon parasite, and were sickly, and so unable 

 to get to work fast. In the hotel, I kept them in 

 chip boxes which had only the smallest apertures 

 between the lid and the box; yet this sufficed for 

 the admission of innumerable swarms of exceedingly 

 small black ants. They scrambled in in thousands, 

 till the boxes were jDerfectly filled with the moving 

 black mass, and they gave the expiring caterpillars 

 no ])e£ice till the death-straggle was over. I feel 

 persuaded, in sj^ite of Sir John Lubbock's experi- 

 ments, that the African ant, whatever may be said 

 of his British brother, is j)c>ssessed of the sense of 

 smell, and has a very keen nose indeed. 



I brought the cocoons to this country, and in the 

 beginning of the following July the moths emerged. 

 Through the kindness of Mr. A. G. Butler of the 

 British Museum they have been named for me. 

 The species is Gonoineta postica, Walker. The 

 males, as in some of our British Bombyces, are 

 only half the size of the females, and, considering 

 the dimensions of the larvae, somewhat small. They 

 are of a chocolate brown, with a paler band across 

 the middle of the fore-wing. The fore-wings are 

 pointed, while the hind ones are cut square, and 

 are remarkable as liaving their hind margin trans- 

 parent and destitute of iDluines. The body has a 

 yello^v ring near the tip. The females, two of 

 which emerged but unfortunately did not expand 

 properly, are clumsy things ; they are paler in 

 colour, with bands of grey, the wings being rounder, 

 and the body clothed with thick woolly yellow 

 plumes. The antennae are pectinated, like those 

 of Zeuzera cesculi, being narrow at the tip but 

 very broad at the base. 



