68 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



it is probable that the use of the little joear-shaped bodies 

 is to form an attraction stronger than that of the scale- 

 insects, and thus to secure the attendance of the protective 

 ants on the young leaves. As far as I could make out, the 

 club-shaped bodies consist mainly of an albuminous sub- 

 stance. The ant colonies are founded by fertilised females, 

 which may be found frequently in the cells of young imbauba 

 plants. Each internode has on the outside, near its upper 

 end, a small pit, where the wall of the cell is much thinner 

 than anywhere else, and where the female makes a hole by 

 which she enters. Soon after this the hole is completely shut 

 again by a luxuriant excrescence from its margins, and so it 

 remains until about a dozen workers have developed from the 

 eggs of the female, when the hole is opened anew from 

 within by these workers. It would appear that the female 

 ants, living in cells closed all around, must be protected 

 against any enemy ; but, notwithstanding, a rather large 

 number of them are devoured by the grub of a parasitic 

 wasp belonging to the Chalcididae. Mr. Westwood has 

 observed that the "pupae of the Chalcididas exhibit a much 

 nearer approach to the obtected pupa3 of the Lepidoptera 

 than is made by any other Hymenoptera" (' Introduction to 

 the Modern Classification of Insects,' part xi. p. 162). Now 

 the pupa of the parasite of the imbauba ant is suspended on 

 the wall of the cell by its poster or extremity, just like the 

 chrysalis of a butterfly. — Mr. Dane in ; in ^Nature' of 

 February 17, 1876. 



Remarks on the OviposHiofi of Limacodes Asellus. — In the 

 early part of last year Mr. W. II. Harwood sent me thirteen 

 pupae of this species, from which I reared five female moths 

 and seven males, and as I wanted to obtain the eggs I was 

 determined to run the risk of allowing them to copulate 

 which one pair obligingly did. A female having emerged 

 first, a male followed the day afterwards; and in about 

 an hour or so after it had emerged they copulated: this took 

 place at mid-day. After separation I placed the female in a 

 gallipot with a few beech leaves, and covered it over with a 

 piece of white silk sarsenet and then with glass, and in two 

 or three days I removed the sarsenet and found it bespattered 

 with a whitish and glutinous-looking substance, resembling 

 gum or varnish ; and not believing it to be the egg, but some 



