ATTACUS ATLAS: A LIFE-HISTORY. 29 
perilous: a scarcely perceptible black speck appears under the last segment, 
and spreads so that in two days the caterpillar is wholly changed in colour, 
and decomposed. . . . The silk is of the same colour as that of A. Cynthia: 
it is very strong and brilliant. I have not been able yet to attempt the 
winding, but hope to report on this shortly.” 
I am not aware that this hope was ever fulfilled; nor that the 
world has heard any more of M. Braine’s experiments. ‘To his 
Memoir, which was originally published in the Bulletin of La 
Société d’Acclimatation, June 1878, M. Maurice Girard, the able 
and learned Secretaire du Conseil, appended a Note Entomologique. 
In this we find a very valuable epitome of the genus Attacus 
(=Fam. Saturniade), and of Atlas in particular; so far as they 
were known up to that time. On the early stages of the species 
he has nothing to present except the note of Lady I. Gilbert, 
which he translates from Horsfield and Moore. He gives a 
description of the adult larva, but this is manifestly drawn up 
from the figure of the English naturalists, not from the life. 
The closing remark of Dr. Girard is worthy of citation :— 
“Tt is worth observing that this species, in those hot regions, behaves 
like S. pyri and carpini with us. The eggs hatch soon after they are laid; 
and the long latent life is that of the pupa. On the contrary, with 
M. Braine, it is the eggs which endure longest, as, with the common 
Silkworm and the Yama-mai. This seems to point to a colder climate, 
and perhaps indicates the race as being from the Himalaya.” 
The first living examples of Attacus Atlas seen in this 
country, that I have been able to hear of, were a dozen living 
cocoons in the possession of Mons. Alfred Wailly of 110 
Clapham Road, Memb. and Laureate of the Soc. Acclim. of 
Paris, and author of several interesting Memoirs on the Culture 
of Silk-producing insects. These cocoons had been imported 
direct from India, early in the year 1877; but not by M. Wailly 
himself, and he is not able to trace the exact locality, but believes 
that they came from the slopes of the Himalayas. It is remarkable 
that no Moth emerged from these cocoons during the whole year 
1877, so wet and cold ; but, in July 1878, imagines were evolved 
of both sexes, which proved to be a variety of unusual richness 
and brilliancy of colour, as well as of unusual dimensions ;—one 
female, as M. Wailly assures me, measuring ten inches and a half 
in expanse. It is most unfortunate that he was unable to obtain 
any marriage of this race. 
