' REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 485 



These larvse were often found feeding in the egg-masses of females 

 which had been destroyed hy soap washes, and also in sacs the eggs 

 of which had hatched some time previously, but never upon fresh 

 eggs. One of the larvee, kept in a glass tube with living scales and 

 fresh eggs, fed slightly on the waxy mass, but did not thrive until 

 after the scales died. It then fed upon the dead scales and molted, 

 but died before transforming. Two nearly full-grown larvae fed read- 

 ily on dead scales which were still soft, and passed through their trans- 

 formations successfully. The same insect fed readily upon the Black 

 Scale (Lecanium oleoe), in this case eating the living insects and their 

 eggs, forming a silken tube along the twig, and passing from one scale 

 to another, just as does the Coccid-eating Dakruma {Dakruma cocci- 

 divora)* in feeding upon the Cottony Maple Scale at the East. 



This is probably the same insect as that mentioned by Professor 

 Comstock, Annual Report Department of Agriculture, 1880, p. 33G, as 

 follovv^s : "Upon one occasion (August 25, 1880), I found within the 

 bodyof a full-grown female [of Z/.o^ece] a lepidopterous larva. * * * 

 The specimen, however, was lost, and no more have been found since." 

 From the fact that this larva destroys living Black Scales, we have 

 every reason to believe that it will also feed upon living Cottony 

 Cushion-scales, and will not confine itself, as heretofore observed, to 

 the dead females and their empty egg-sacs. 



Blastohasis aphidiella, Riley MS., we ha,ve reared from the larvse 

 feeding on the contents of Phylloxera hickory galls. 



The genus Blastohasis Zeller is distinguished by the first anten- 

 nal joint being compressed and much broader than the flagellum ; its 

 lower side concave, the anterior edge above its base furnished with 

 erect hairs ; its apex above provided in the male with a scaly tooth ; 

 the flagellum in the male is filiform, faintly serrate, and furnished 

 with short cilise, its base curved and anteriorly excised ; in the female 

 it is simple. The palpi are as long as thorax and rather stout in 

 the male, faintly compressed and covered with coarse scales, the last 

 joint slightly over half the length of the middle one and its apex 

 pointed. The ocelli are present. The front wings are narrow^ their 

 apical portion quite slender and pointed ; eleven- veined, vein 1 h dis- 

 tinct. The hind wings have seven well-separated veins. This is not 

 the place to discuss the variation which the species of the genus are 

 subject to: but they are small in size, quite uniform in general color 

 and markings, but varying so in the intensity and the details of orna- 

 mentation that the species are not easily separated, and we shall not 

 be at all surprised if future experience should justify the combining 

 of several which are now separated. 



Blastobasis icery^ella n. sp.— Expanse IS™'" to 15™™. General color pale 

 cinereous. Head gray; eyes duU black, fringed posteriorly by rather long yellow- 

 ish hairs, which curve over them like eyelashes; palpi above pale vellowish-grav; in 

 some specimens the inferior surface is almost black, whilst in others there is onlv a 

 slight sprinkhng of blackish scales: antennae uniformly grav. with a sUght yellow- 

 ish tinge and faintly darker annulation, the tuft of the basal joint almost white. 

 Primaries cmereous, sprmkled quite densely with blackish scales; a linear, blackish, 

 transverse band more or less distinct (in one male only indicated by a small duskv 

 spot at costa), starting from basal third of costa and obliquing posteriorly, it termi- 

 nates at about the middle of iimer margin : its inner edge is bordered by a more or 

 less distuict paler gray hue; the black discal spot, which in other species is usuaUy 



* We have bred a species of Dakruma the past season, indistinguishable from D, 

 cocculivora, from the Cochineal insect {Coccus cacti) received from Dr. A. F. Car- 

 rothers, of San Antonio, Tex. , who collected the specimens at his ranch (luka ranch) 

 neax Ck)tuUa, La Salle County, Texas. 



