42 LEPIDOFTERA. 



On the wing in May and June. 



Larva very glossy, pale red or reddish-white ; head dark 

 chestnut ; dorsal plate broadly divided, dull black ; anal 

 plate small, round, dull black ; raised dots small, black. 



July to the second April, in a most singular chamber on 

 Scotch fir {Pinus sylvcstris), the chambers composed wholly 

 of the yellowish-white resin of the tree. It appears that 

 the very young larva bites a hole in the side of a twig of a 

 young tree, and eats its way in, mining until it reaches the 

 next young growing shoot, which it hollows out ; then bores 

 another hole at the other side of the twig and gnaws the 

 bark, thus inducing a rapid flow of sap, which congeals 

 around the hole and seems to be formed by the larva into a 

 large rounded rough nodule, divided within into two chambers 

 communicating together. Here it lives, apparently feeding 

 mainly upon the resin, through the winter, becoming full 

 fed about June, remaining in the nodule in that condition 

 during the second winter and spinning up therein in the 

 spring. Thus two years are occupied in its cycle of meta- 

 morphosis. 



Pupa brilliantly glossy, pitchy-brown ; in a silken cocoon 

 in the upper part of the nodule of resin, in which is a weak 

 place through which the moth emerges. 



I have little knowledge of the moth in a living state, and 

 none of it at liberty. When reared from the resinous nodules 

 — about which there is no difficulty — it sits in a sluggish 

 manner on the fir needles and scarcely attempts to escape, 

 from which I infer that it is naturally sluggish. Doubtless 

 it flies at dusk like other species ; but so far I am not aware 

 of the capture of a single specimen in the perfect state in 

 these Islands. The nodules in which the larva3 live, hyber- 

 nate and pupate, are easily collected, and I think that all 

 the specimens in our collections have probably been reared 

 from these habitations, which, as I understand, are almost 



