38 THE LEPIDOPTERIST 



ENTOMOLOGICAL NOTES 



By Aug. Knetzger, St. Louis, Mo. 



A Strange Case of Pupation : — About the middle 

 of September 1916, a neighbor's boy came to my house 

 and brought me a larva of Telea polyphemus. It 

 seemed barely alive and probably had fallen off a tree. 

 As its size indicated its nearness to the pupal stage, 

 I placed ^t on a sheet of tissue paper in a glass jar 

 and put a few maple leaves around it. Next morning 

 I observed it had not eaten and seemed entirely devoid 

 of life. The following morning I noticed considerable 

 shrinkage in its size and no sign of life. The third 

 morning it was still more shrunken and I was almost 

 certain it had died. The following day I did not see 

 it, but imagine my surprise on the fifth day when I 

 found lying upon the tissue paper where I had placed 

 the larva, a fine, healthy and vigorous pupa, without 

 any cocoon, but the secretion, usually employed in the 

 making of the cocoon showing plainly on the tissue 

 paper upon which it had been discharged, no attempt, 

 however, having been made to draw together the tissue 

 paper or any of the leaves. 



A Peculiar Case of Ovipositing : — Last July while 

 at work in my garden, I noticed a Papilio asterias 

 (female) flying busily about. I had in the garden at 

 the time some dill, parsley, parsnips, and carrots and 

 it seemed to me that she desired to oviposit, so I moved 

 away so as to give her a clear field, but after a few 

 minutes of circling about she suddenly dashed for 

 the rear of the garden and hovered for a moment 

 over a leaf of the wafer ash growing there and then 

 flew away. Upon inspecting the leaf I found she 

 had really deposited an tgg. Unfortunately on the 

 third day the egg had disappeared from the leaf. It 

 would have been interesting to see if the larva would 

 hav fed on wafer ash. Of course the question is, 

 why did the female oviposit on a plant not supposed 

 to be fit for the larva, when the garden contained a 

 variety of plants, either of which would have furnished 

 the accustomed food? 



