144 LIFE-HISTORIES OF GRACILLARIAD® 
globules is in position, when the labours of the little animal are over, and it 
composes itself for pupation. ‘Phe number of pellets probably varies, but— 
in one cocoon—I have counted more than forty of these little objects ”’(3). 
These observations have been corroborated by Y. Ramachandra Rao and 
by Mrs. Drake, of Serampore. The former, in a note dated July 1916, wrote :— 
«These cocoons are remarkable owing to the fact that they are ornamented 
on the upper surface by a collection of numerous bubble-like balloonets. These 
are prepared at the hind end of the alimentary canal of the caterpillar and 
ejected, whereupon the larva makes a slit on the top of the cocoon, attaches 
a thread to the bubble, pushes it out, and then patches up the roof. Each 
balloonet, when examined carefully, is found to be made up of several cham- 
bers’. Mrs. Drake, in a letter dated 5th May 1914, wrote :—‘ The cocoons 
are generally made on the leaflets, and it is the making of the cocoon that is 
so exceedingly interesting. The caterpillar, after enclosing itself in so thin 
a covering that its red bands are still quite conspicuous, makes a little globule 
and, parting the threads at one end of its cover, thrusts out the globule. For 
five minutes it spins again, then turns completely round and thrusts another 
globule out at the other end. This it continues to do till its cocoon is covered 
with the glistening globules, taking five minutes for each globule and thrusting 
them out from alternate ends till they join im the middle of the cocoon. The 
way the globules come out is more like soap-bubbles than anything I can 
think of—indeed, I wrote my little daughter that I had found a caterpillar 
blowing soap-bubbles. The cocoons I have had under observation have been 
made in the morning and the moth has emerged in the evening of the seventh 
day”. As the bubbles are thrust out, the cuts are closed with more silk applied 
from within. In this manner nearly the whole of the cocoon may be covered 
with these stalked bubbles. In a completed cocoon no openings can be seen 
and the stalks of the bubbles appear to arise from the surface of the cocoon. 
As regards the object of these bubbles, it has been suggested that enemies 
may be deluded into supposing that they are empty cocoons of parasites and 
that the cocoon is therefore untenanted. The larva is, however, subject to 
attack by Chaleidid, and Braconid parasites. It may be noted that in the 
allied North American genus Marmara the exterior of the cocoon of M. 
salictella is described as “ covered with little froth-like globules, which 
resemble minute pearls’’. (Clemens, Tinea of North America, p. 212 
(1872).) 
The larva pupates inside this cocoon and the moth emerges after six or 
seven days. The pupa is about 4 mm. long, cylindrical, and rather less than 
1 mm, broad, light yellow with a greenish tinge, the eyes black and prominent 
