338 LEFIDOPTERA. 



tliey fall the most helpless objects imaginable, incapable of 

 any motion except rolling over. In some cases they only 

 succeed in pushing halfway through the pupa skin, which 

 projects a little from the tail end of the case, and in this 

 position remain till they die. From my own observation not 

 only does the female, generally, completely free herself of 

 the case, but it is only when she does so that any union with 

 the male is possible." It is known, however, that in some 

 instances the female remains in the case and there deposits 

 her eggs, and that the male, by the power of telescopic 

 elongation of his body, visits her in the case. This Mr. J. 

 Jenner Weir has substantiated. One thing is however certain, 

 that many females of this species, as well as of others in the 

 group, have the power of depositing fertile eggs even when 

 never visited by a male, though it is believed that only 

 females are produced from such eggs. Whether the eggs 

 are deposited in the case or on the surface to which the 

 female has fallen, the young larvae, which hatch in about ten 

 days, lose no time in enclosing themselves in a little case of 

 silk — thimble- shaped at first — which they speedily cover with 

 any small vegetable refuse at hand. Additions to its size 

 appear to be made at the open end, the tube of silk being 

 spun a little further, and then additions of extraneous 

 materials made to its outer surface. It appears to be next 

 to impossible to rear these larvae in confinement, their 

 obstinate refusal of food even when enlarging the case, and 

 their determination to lie over till another season rather than 

 spin up, tend to exhaust them, and they ultimately die 

 unchanged. To rear the moth, the full grown cases should 

 be gathered as soon as spun up at large. 



Apparently almost confined to the extensive heaths of 

 Hants and Dorsetshire, and to the New Forest. It seems to 

 have been originally found at West Parley and West Hurne in 

 Dorset, by Mi-. Dale, but has since been met with plentifully, 

 though locally, at Studland, Eingwood, Wimborne, Bourne- 

 mouth, and Lyndhurst; also recorded, very rarely, from Devon. 



