SCIENTIFIC NOTES* 299 



Pellice, a pair of Melananjia f/alathea in such thoroughly bad condition 

 that I was certain that the ? , at least, must have paired before. I 

 boxed them, and they separated about 4.30 p.m. Thee? died about an 

 hour afterwards. In the morning I found that the ? had laid nine 

 eggs, and had also died during the night. Her abdomen was quite 

 empty, so that a previous pairing was in her case almost certain. 

 The eggs hatched on August 24th-28th. — Ibid. 



The lid of the cocoon of Lachneis lanestris. — At page 244, 

 antea, our Editor makes a quotation from Mr. Latter's paper, Trans. 

 Ent. Soc. London, 1895, pp. 407-8 (not pp. 475-8 as there printed). In 

 Mr. Latter's remarks there is nothing to correct, but some amplifica- 

 tion is desirable. He refers to Lasiocainpa quercm var. callanae, Lachneis 

 lanestris and Cochlidion liinacodes {testndo), as having similar cocoons, 

 and engineering their escape in the same way. He especially notes 

 that L. quercus var. callanae and Cochlidion testado have the head-front of 

 the imago produced into an umbo or boss, and that Lachneis lanestris is 

 similarly but less markedly endowed. He also notes that this boss 

 hardly exists in the pupa of the Lachneids, but is more marked in 

 the pupa of C. testudo than in the imago. I have not observed the 

 emergence of L.quercm var. callunae for many years; but I have made recent 

 observations on L. lanestris and C. testado. I have no doubt about them, 

 but about L. qaercus var. callanae, my ideas are more vague. L. qaerciis var. 

 callanae, I think, breaks off a lid like they do, but more often it fractures 

 very irregularly and often into several pieces, but it is a fracture rather 

 than a solution, though Latter says the imago produces much alkaline 

 liquid. In all three cases the force producing the fracture is the 

 pressure, which the inflation of the imago enables it to exert from 

 "within from end to end of the cocoon." The "sharply-pointed 

 umbo" merely determines the starting point of the fracture, i.e., it 

 increases the strain immensely at one particular point, and as soon as 

 fracture commences there it at once runs round the whole lid. Mr. 

 Latter is quite right in supposing the lid of C. testado is ruptured by 

 the pupa, i.e., by the imago within the pupa skin, since, like all 

 Ixcomplet^, the unruptured pupa emerges from the cocoon. The sharp 

 point of the pupa does not act as Mr. Latter expresses it " as an awl," 

 but makes the pressure the whole pupa is exerting a little more 

 strenuous at one point, tending to an angular bending of the cocoon at 

 that point, and so beginning the fracture. When a " pupa incom- 

 pleta " has to force its way through meshes of silk, &c., as in most 

 Tortricids, Cossas, &c., an awl-like effect probably occurs, but in all 

 cases of lids, as for instance in Sesiids, the process is probably the 

 same as occurs in C. testado. Most people are, I think, familiar with 

 the eftect of a very localised interference being jjfr sc harmless, but 

 determining at once that a strain should produce powerful effects. — 

 T. A. Chapman, M.D., Betula, Keigate. 



LUFFIA LAPIDELLA LAKV^ IN SEPTEMBER. Mr. Luff rCpOrtS that 



the imagines of this insect from larvoB that have fed up on inland 

 walls have long emerged, yet he sends from rocks near the sea 

 living and active larvte that are apparently full-fed. I brought last 

 spring from Cannes a number of larvfe that I supposed to be, and that 

 by all precedent ought to have been, Laffia ferchaultella, and which 

 I reported as such {antea, vol. xiii., p. 190). During my absence in 

 July these emerged, and though on my return, almost unrecognisable. 



