THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 461 



down which clothes the leaf, and feeding on the parenchyma, 

 actually burying themselves in their food. The stages of 

 existence seem to follow one another in rapid succession, for 

 after observing the larvae in a very juvenile state, I have 

 returned in the course of a few days and have found them, 

 without exception, either spinning or having spun their 

 cocoons, and then, again, in a few days more I find they have 

 emerged and paired, and set seriously to work to obey the 

 imperative command — " Increase and multiply." The larva 

 is by no means an attractive object : it looks like, and is, a 

 small mass of dark-coloured gelatine, possessed of the least 

 possible allowance of locomotive power ; as to head, legs, 

 claspers, or other implement of nutrition or motion, I have 

 never detected any, but this must be owing to my imperfect 

 powers of perception, for the creature certainly moves and as 

 certainly eats; the evidence of the former is to be found in 

 its change of position. Kirby and Spence, quoting De 

 Geer, mention a larva of this kind that moved so slowly as to 

 be a quarter of an hour in going the breadth of a hand ; but 

 surely those larvae of Cionus that I have watched would be 

 a week, if not a lifetime, performing this feat. The pupal 

 state is far more interesting and attractive : these amorphous 

 lumps of mucilage, apparently headless, wingless, and legless, 

 have yet sense enough or instinct enough to spin a most 

 ingenious cocoon or cradle made of a kind of net-work, just 

 like that I have seen spread over a balloon ; the only differ- 

 ence observable is that the Cionus larva, more ingenious than 

 man, spreads the net-work without having the balloon inside 

 it: and in this well-ventilated and well-lighted apartment 

 the change to a pupa and subsequently to a beetle takes 

 place. — Edward I^ewman.^ 



Galls of the Oak. — Miss Weise, who has translated Dr. 

 Mayr's descriptions of oak-galls, has sent me some galls, 

 evidently the work of a species of Euura, and precisely 

 resembling those produced on the leaves of Salix fragilis by 

 Euura Gallae. In every instance an aperture on the upper 

 side of the gall notifies the escape of the gall-maker or its 

 parasite. — Edicard Newman. 



Galls on Orleans-plum leaves. — My brother sends me from 

 Leominster a number of leaves of the Orleans plum, the under 

 surfaces of which are almost completely covered with small 



