164 MR. STAINTON ON ORGYIA. 
place within the cocoon, and lasts about halfaday. I have un- 
fortunately forborne from disturbing the privacy of the matri- 
monial joys, but believe that there is nothing new to be observed. 
“T can only state that at last the male reappears in very desolate 
condition, and then has no long prospect of life. In my cages 
they lived, at most, for only two days after the copulation. The 
female does not wait long before she deposits her eggs in the 
cocoon, and then dies.”’ 
We have now traced the peculiar habit of the female not quitting 
the cocoon in four species—rupestris, Trigotephras, Erice, and 
dubia. Now, if Corsica and splendida be referred as varieties to 
rupestris and dubia respectively, we have but seven species of 
Orgyia in Europe ; and of one of those, O. awrolimbata, the female 
is unknown; hence, out of six species, the abnormal habit prevails 
in four,—Orgyia antiqua and O. gonostigma (the only two yet 
known to occur in this country) being the only species in which 
the female quits the cocoon and deposits the eggs outside it. 
Now, in this habit of the greater number of our European species 
of Orgyia what an approach we have to Ozketicus and Psyche! 
The genera are still widely separated in the larva state ; for all the 
larve of Orgyia are hairy, gaily ornamented with bums of hair, 
whereas the larve of Ovketicus and Psyche are naked, and have 
their ugly bodies protected and concealed by the cases which the 
lary construct. But in the imago state we have this important 
coincidence: the only genera of Lepidoptera in which the female 
never comes out of the abode of the pupa, but there awaits the 
approaches of the male, are Orgyia, Ovketicus, Psyche, and Fumea. 
I have spoken only of the European species of Orgyia, but I 
believe it will be found that a similar peculiarity prevails amongst 
extra-European species. In the collection of the British Museum 
I have only noticed females of two species of this genus from extra- 
European localities. One of these, O. lewcostigma from Nova Scotia, 
appears to belong to the same group as O. antiqua; and I fancy, 
from the development of the legs and antenne of the female, that 
she leaves the cocoon. ‘The other species, O. australis, from New 
Holland, has the female comparatively undeveloped, and I should 
imagine that she does not quit the cocoon. 

