214 Psyche [October-December 



seen running on the trees though I did not see any attacks by 

 them on the caterpi!!ars (as observed in previous years); about 

 the end of June the caterpillars were beginning to bunch up and I 

 noticed at once Calosoma larvae working on them. These nearly 

 always operated on some bunch of caretpillars on or near the 

 trunk. The larvae were very voracious, eating constantly and 

 increasing rapidly in size, their preference, if any, seemed to be 

 caterpillars hunched up ready to become pupse, because then they 

 are perfectly helpless, almost torpj^d, still they constantly attacked 

 the caterpillars and sucked out the pupse. One small larva 

 fastened into the rear of a full grown 9 caterpillar, the latter 

 threshed about, but the larva with his legs bent up held on 

 tght and finally the caterpillar, still threshing, began to crawl 

 rapidly up the tree, then juice began to drop from the body of 

 the larva. He had got his head into the caterpillar, the latter 

 stopped and the liquid ran down the larva. Next morning the 

 caterpillar was a dry skin. 



Various diptera attended the caterpillar bunches; only one, 

 however, was actually observed to attack. This was a grayish fly 

 somewhat larger than the domestic, and noticeably grayish on the 

 upper side. The fly hovered over the caterpillars, lit on one and 

 deposited a small white object, which I could see wiggle. Call- 

 ing my man, who happened to be near by, we saw this little 

 wiggler disappear into the body of the caterpillar at about his 

 anterior third. This caterpillar I boxed to get the fly, but the 

 caterpillar died of wilt. In addition to the insect enemies, the 

 caterpillars were attacked by some form of "wilt" disease, which 

 developed tremendously when they began to bunch up. For 

 several days I had under observation one particular bunch of 

 about seventy-five caterpillars, mostly large females. The disease 

 would first show in a distending of parts of the body which gra- 

 dually became semi-shiny, then the vitality would seem to go 

 out of the caterpillar, his entire viscera would become putrid, 

 and breaking open drop out, leaving the remains hanging. This 

 bunch of seventy-five was kept at about the same size for some 

 days by fresh additions. Not one spun a web and only once 

 was a Calosoma observed. They all died of disease. Just after 



