1884. ) 195 



in the box for twelve days, I then began to look for them, and found 

 some small earthy particles of the rubbish adhering slightly to the 

 bottom of the box, and under these I saw three larvae, and a fourth 

 lying under a morsel of old straw ; after this, I removed all into a pot 

 provided with more of the sweepings ; later still, I began to realize 

 the hazard of satisfying my curiosity while inspecting their progress 

 from time to time, as I was obliged to turn them out of their tubular 

 dwellings, which were of rather tender construction ; and for some 

 time this work of danger resulted in casualties, until after fatally 

 injuring several larvae, I was impelled to invoke help from Mr. Fletcher, 

 between whom and myself many communications had passed at inter- 

 vals concerning these larvae, and on the 24th of September, he most 

 kindly sent me six of part of the same brood he had been rearing for 

 himself : and of these again, after they had wintered safely in a more 

 or less torpid condition, I was unfortunate enough to injure several 

 in the following spi-ing, and in April found I had only two survivors : 

 one of these fully grown, after abandoning its tube, crawled about 

 and remained exposed on the side of the pot for a day or two, but 

 finally retired to the bottom, on which it spun up in a firmly fixed 

 cocoon on the last day of April, and I bred the moth from it on 14th 

 of June : the second was kept in another pot, wherein it eventually 

 during May spun its cocoon, and changed to a pupa, of which I secured 

 a figure and description before the imago came forth on the 8th of 

 July. 



Meanwhile, I resolved to make acquaintance with the larvae in 

 their native haunts, and early in May sought for them in a farm stable, 

 and there, by help from a small boy, on several occasions during that 

 month, a number of them were discovered, enabling me thoroughly 

 to learn their natural mode of life : the place in the stable where they 

 were found was a dark corner between the oat-bin and north wall, in a 

 very narrow interval of space between the two, into which some of the 

 hulls and chaff would often be falling amongst the particles of straw 

 accumulated there, whenever the bin was opened for feeding the horses ; 

 the larvae were almost all on the floor in a cool and slightly damp tem- 

 perature, inhabiting tubular residences of various lengths, quite flexible 

 and adaptable to any surface, and as all these tubes were more or less 

 covered with small fragments of straw and wheat husks, they, while 

 being removed, appeared like strings of rubbish, accidently held to- 

 gether without any visible means of cohesion, until the fragments were 

 plucked away, when the dirty coloured silk would betray the residence 

 of a larva, which never showed itself in any instance until turned 



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