THE 



^S>> VOLUME XXI. V/^ 



ON AN EXTRAORDINAEY HELICIFORM LEPIDOPTEROUS LARYA- 

 CASE FROM EAST AFRICA. 



BY ROBERT McLACHLAN, F.R.S., &c. 



At the Meeting of the Entomological Society of London, held on 

 ^February 7th, 1877, I exhibited " an extraordinary case of a Lepi- 

 dopteroiis larva from Zanzibar, sent by Dr. Kirk, who had found it on 

 Mimosa. It was probably allied to Psyche and Oiketicus, and was in 

 the form of a flattened Helix., half-an-inch in diameter, formed 

 apparently of a kind of papier-mache, with a smooth whitish outside 

 coating." {Cf. Proc. Ent. Soc, 1877, p. ii ; Ent. Mo. Mag., xiii, p. 

 240.) Wishing now to have a figure made from that case, I am unable 

 to find it. 



Very recently my friend Mr. Bates gave me nine cases of a some- 

 what similar character, found by Dr. Baxter at Mpwaipwa, East Africa, 

 about 100 miles inland from Zanzibar. Dr. Baxter's attention had 



been drawn 

 to them 

 by seeing 

 them carried 

 about by the 

 larvae that 

 formed them. 

 But these, 

 instead of 

 hemg flatten- 

 ed, are high, 

 and resemble 

 shells of the 



genus Cyclostoma or Paludina in a wonderful degree. They vary from 

 9 to 13 mm. in diameter at the low^est whorl, by from 9 to 15 mm. in 

 height. Each forms about 3^ whorls, the sutures indicating which 

 are not very sharp, owing to a coating to be presently alluded to. 

 In six of them the spiral turns from left to right, in three from 

 right to left. The apex is blunt and depressed ; the mouth nearly 



