222 [October, 



The above may be considered the normal life-liistory, but there are 

 indications that variations on it are not uncommon ; the chief of these is 

 that probably some larvae take two years to feed vip, as it is possible to 

 find in a cone containing both pupae and adults, one or two small but 

 healthy larvae, or to find in the winter old-looking cones with emergence 

 holes and in addition one or two larvae. This also received partial 

 confirmation when still infested cones, which had not fallen, so that their 

 age could be definitely recognised as three years from pollination, were 

 found to show old emergence holes as well as to contain larvae and pupae. 

 This fact could also, of course, find an explanation in that the emerging 

 adults in the previous year had oviposited in the same cones, but this 

 suggestion receives no confirmation. 



Distrihutioii. 

 Throughout the chir {Pin us loiigifoUa) forests of the W. Almora 

 Forest Division, and probably of Kumaon, if not further. The altitude 

 range is practically that of the chir, 3500-6500 feet, and the insect is 

 commonest in open sunny stands. Tiie extent of the damage done is 

 probably almost negligible in a good seed year, but when cones are few, 

 the proportion infested may rise to quite an appreciable figure, and locally 

 in 1918 and 1919 may have reached 40 per cent or more, almost every 

 cone on some trees being attacked. Probably in non-fire-protected areas 

 a good many infested cones are burnt on the ground, but the only other 

 check on its multiplication noted in three years is a fungus which some- 

 times kills the larvae, these latter appearing to dry up and to become very 

 brittle, and on being broken across are seen to be full of a. dense white 

 mycelium ; as, however, adults may be bred out from other larvae in the 

 same cone, this disease cannot be a very important factor. Cones have 

 been seen from which woodpeckers had extracted seed without touching 

 the larvae whose burrows were disclosed. It will be remembered that 

 there is no break in the surface of the cone while the larvae are feeding, 

 so that they are protected by a complete hard and smooth shell, and this 

 may account for their freedom from Hymenopterous parasites. 



General Semarks. 



Infested cones were first collected in 1917 and a few adults were 

 bred out in the rains of that year. More Avere obtained in the following 

 season and an effort made to observe oviposition, but without success. In 

 1919 this attempt was repeated, the adults being sleeved out of doors 

 over shoots of pine carrying old cones which had shed their seed in March 

 1919 and new ones that were due to do so in 1920 and 1921. Ova were 



