•[20 May. li'lS. 



mutual ])rotoetiou. The larvie were superficially rather like those of 

 A. caja, Jj., Init with uuiformly greeu hairs. Uufortuuately they died 

 in confinement before assuming the pupa stage. I diligently searc-hed 

 the vicinity for other specimens of the larva or of the imago, but 

 without success. 



It was my good fortune on one occasion (June 10th, 1911), in 

 company with my friend, Lieut. G. M Lovell, to witness a monster 

 gathering of larva? of the " Gripsy motli," Onteria diftuar, L. At the 

 southern border of the Cork "Woods, near San Roque, we came upon a 

 tree standing apart, in the middle of three cross tracks. The tree 

 girthed about 7 or 8 feet, and was completely covered, apparently 

 several layers deep, with a moving mass composed of countless 

 thousands of catei'pillars, whilst for a distance of about 3 or 4 feet 

 from the base the ground was carpeted with heaps of those that had 

 fallen in the struggle for a foothold on the trunk. The surrounding 

 trees were covered to a lesser extent, but it appeared marvellous to me 

 how any of them could manage to make their loosely-netted cocoon in 

 the chinks of the bark and pupate successfully, with so many of their 

 fellows continually passing over and around them. Quantities of the 

 larvae fell on us from the branches overhead, and many of them 

 evidently mistook the space between oixr collars and our necks for 

 crevices in the lia)'k of the trees, much to our discomfiture. 



In company with 0. dispar, and moving uj) the trunks for the 

 same purpose, were a few larvse of Onjyia trigotephras, Bdv. Some 

 of these I captured and successfully bred out, at home. It was 

 interesting to note that the cocoon of the (J 0. trigotephras is quite 

 different from that of the $ , the former being of looser construction 

 and nearly transparent, whilst the latter is quite oj^aque, of tough 

 texture, and with a neat little hole left in the anal end. I further 

 noticed that the shapeless little bag of eggs which repi'esents the $ 

 moth, never leaves the cocoon from the date of her emergence until 

 she dies of old age. She apj)arently never knows the taste of food, 

 nor takes nourishment of any kind. Copulation takes place through 

 the hole left iu the cocoon, and in due course the ova are deposited 

 therein, all around the anal part of her body, and in the space 

 between it and the small hole in the cocoon, so that when the 

 mass of ova is taken out for examination, it is roughly cup-shaped. 

 The eggs are carefully packed with loose hairs from her body 

 between each layer. I counted 60 eggs in the mass I examined. 

 Apparently the young larvte, when hatched, crawl through the hole in 



