36 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



the females will only apply to a small portion of the Lepi- 

 doptera, as the females of most of the Nocttiaj are nearly or 

 quite as active as the males, and this is certainly the case 

 with a large portion of the butterflies, yet in such common 

 species as Janira and Tithonus you seldom, if ever, see a 

 female till a week or ten days after the appearance of the 

 males. Lycaena .^gon swarms in certain spots by the side 

 of our forest, but you cannot find a female till the males have 

 been out at least a week ; but when they do emerge from the 

 pupae they are readily seen, as they sit on the stems of grass, 

 &c., expanding their wings. Mr. Greene has entirely over- 

 looked the important fact that the female soon ceases to be 

 attractive to the male : in a state of nature I believe copula- 

 tion almost always takes place within twenty-four hours after 

 the female appears in the winged state, mostly in a much 

 shorter time. I have seen some of the Bombyces in 

 copulation before the wings of the female were fully ex- 

 panded. The females of this family are very short-lived, and 

 are never so attractive to the males as they are on the day on 

 which they emerge from the pupa state ; a virgin female of 

 Bombyx Quercus, for instance, seldom lives a week, and 

 generally ceases to be attractive to the males in three or four 

 days : if Mr. Greene's theory were correct, hundreds of 

 females must die annually unimpregnated, and it is not pro- 

 bable that this is the case. The time of day or night at 

 which the male Bombyces fly appears to be always the same 

 as that in which the females emerge from the pupa state, and 

 I believe in most cases copulation takes place very shortly 

 afterwards. The prior appearance of the male is not con- 

 fined to the Lepidoptera : I believe it is the case in nearly 

 all the other orders. Hundreds of Anihophora Acervorum 

 breed in the wall of my garden, but I never saw a female of 

 this bee till the males had been out for several days ; and the 

 males of the Libellulas (dragon-flies) always appear first. In 

 conclusion, I maj' just say that I incline to Mr. Andrews' 

 opinion, " that the evidence afforded on this question by 

 insects in captivity is of little or no value." — Henry Double- 

 day ; Epping, February 3, 1866. 



Prior Appearance of Male or Female, 8fc. — Mr. Greene 

 does not mistake my meaning when he says (Entom. iii. 21) 

 that I seem to think that the evidence afforded on the question 



