THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 53 



and females respectively in a state of nature. That the males, 

 ill a state of nature, do appear first, seems to be a fact esta- 

 })lished on general experience. But from this fact of their 

 prior appearance we cannot safely infer, as has been too 

 commonly inferred, their prior emergence. The retiring 

 habits of the females, and their domestic duties, would fully 

 account for their not appearing so soon as the males. How, 

 then, are we to get at their times of emergence } I answer, 

 by observations made on them in captivily. This Mr. 

 Andrews regards as a method "of little or no value," because 

 probably he only thinks of indoors captivity ; but I am 

 thinking of out-of-doors captivity. Let your flower-pots and 

 breeding-cages be placed in some shed or summer-house, 

 open to the air, and only about as much sheltered from the 

 weather as insects generally like to be. This may be called 

 capliirity, but it has always appeared to me that a pupa 

 inside such a shed would observe the same times and seasons 

 as a pupa outside ; and if it were the habit of the male pupae 

 to emerge before the females, they would do so as certainly 

 inside as outside. In such a place as this, then, the Lepi- 

 doptera may be studied, as far as regards their emergence 

 from the pupa state, with as much satisfaction, to most 

 minds, as if one could witness and note down the emergence 

 of every moth throughout the season in any large" wood. Let 

 the shed be in a wood, if you like, with one end qnite open, 

 and who would think it likely, or even believe it possible, 

 that the pupae on one side of the wall would follow a differ- 

 ent law, as to the priority of emergence of males or females, 

 from those on the other ? Therefore, I repeat, we have the 

 means of arriving at a just conclusion on this question. En- 

 tomologists have only to keep their pupae in the open air, 

 and make observations. We shall then have Nature's own 

 solution to this question in a few seasons, and probably by 

 the end of the season now commencing shall be able to 

 make a good guess what that solution will be. — {Rev.) 

 E. Horton ; Powick, Worcester, March 1, 1866. 



Prior Appearance of Male or Female, f^c. — I was very 

 glad to find, from the last number of the 'Entomologist,' that 

 my observations on this question had elicited three replies, 

 though my satisfaction was considerably damped by finding 

 that the opinions expressed by the three writers were all 



