Neuropterous genus Ascalaphus. 9 
suppose that when relying on its own resources, a free 
insect, it obtains so abundant a supply of food as when 
well fed in confinement. I looked for but never found 
any traces of excremental matter. 
‘The larvee first cast their skins on the 4th May, and 
_ others effected the change a day or so later. The second 
moult commenced on the 17th May, and on the 1st June 
one of them commenced to spin its cocoon, which it 
completed on the 8rd June. The first one to spin came 
out of its cocoon on the 23rd June. The full-grown 
larva measures seven-tenths of an inch from the end of 
the closed mandibles to the extremity of the abdomen, 
and the length of the body from the shoulder four-tenths 
of aninch. The colour is dull brown, with three longi- 
tudinal darker stripes down the abdomen, and a row of 
six dark spots down the under side of the abdomen. In 
life the head lies very flat and capable of considerable 
motion in all directions. In casting their skins they 
first got their heads out. Immediately after the change 
their mandibles appeared to be small and soft, but they 
enlarged and hardened very quickly; this would be 
necessary to enable them to disengage the teeeh from 
the old mandible-sheath.”’ 
The insect here described from Ceylon appears to me 
to agree with A. insimulans, Walker, described (Cat. 
Neuropt. Brit. Mus., pt. 2, p. 428) as a native of N. India. 
It is placed in the genus Helicomitus by Mr. M‘Lachlan 
(Proc. Linn. Soe., xi., p. 261). 
Dr. Hagen states that he had received three species 
of Ascalaphides from Colombo, Glyptobasis incusans ?, 
Ascalaphus cervinus?, and Hybris flavicans; and Mr. 
M‘Lachlan has described a larva, supposed to be that of 
the genus Ulula, in the Journal of the Linnean Society 
of London, T. xi., p. 225. 
EXPLANATION oF Puates I. & II. 
Fig. 1 represents a blade of grass with the eggs of 
Ascalaphus hungaricus arranged in two longitudinal 
series, twenty-six in each, for which I am indebted to 
Dr. Brauer, of Vienna. Many of these eggs have a 
semioval aperture on the outside of the row, from which 
