THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 173 



was converted into a spiral cone. The leaves and future blos- 

 soms were twisted round and round, one over the other, like 

 rolls of cotton or cloth in miniature, the upper end coming 

 to a sharp point ; I have counted as many as forty-four 

 folds : in the bottom of these cones the larva feeds, right into 

 the stem, down as low as the next joint or septum. I took 

 some of these cones home and put them in a jam-pot, and at 

 the end of June there came out some small Diptera, which, 

 being examined by Mr. Walker, proved to be Chlorops tar- 

 sata. A day or two afterwards there emerged a dipterous fly 

 of larger size, which Mr. Walker decides to be Lipara lucens, 

 an insect entirely new to the British Fauna. I now became 

 curious to account for the appearance of the smaller Diptera 

 (Chlorops), of which up to this time I had no knowledge. 

 Some two or three weeks after all had come out I opened 

 several of the cones, and at last found out the pupa-cases of 

 the little black dipterous fly : these were placed in about 

 ten or twelve folds of the twisted cones, and the larva had 

 completely eaten all the soft portion of the folded leaf, and 

 had left the harder portions or silica of the leaf so perfect 

 as to make a fine object for microscopical examination. In 

 1859 1 again found the cones at Aldeby, just as they began to 

 be formed, and again opened them, and found my old friend 

 the Lipara larva in the middle of the cones, but none of the 

 Chlorops, 1 watched the larva of the Lipara, and found they 

 fed all through the winter, changing to a brownish pupa in 

 Ma}', with the head downwards, close to the hard joint of the 

 reed ; and at the end of June it came out. Now it is a mys- 

 tery to me how it manages to leave its prison-house ; the 

 head being down, it must turn upwards by some means or 

 other, and so make its way out of the folded dried cone with- 

 out gnawing the reed, as there are no signs in the cones to 

 show that they are empty till you cut them open with a 

 knife. Now the green larva of Nonagria Cannae burrows in 

 the stem of Typha, leaving a carefully-eaten passage to ad- 

 mit of the imago escaping, and [generally the external thin 

 membrane is left as a cover to the hole, and not quite eaten 

 through : the pupa is found head upwards. Nonagria Typhae 

 has a similar habit, except that the pupa' is head downwards. 

 How does the fly escape ? — I believe by forcing its way up 

 between the folded leaves, which, being elastic, close again 



