38 Mr. Templeton's Descriptions 



XI. Descriptions of some Species of the Lepidopterous Genus 

 Oiketicus,y7'om Ceylon. By Robert Templeton, Esq., 

 R. A. (in a Letter addressed to J. O. Westwood.) 



[Read 6th April, 1846,] 



" Tertia species, ni fallor, mox describenda." — 



Rev. L, Guilding, Linn. Trans, xv. p. 375. 



About fourteen months ago, while searching a stunted bush {Citrus 

 decumana) for caterpillars, I observed, depending from one of the 

 branches, a singularly formed cocoon, whose mode of attachment 

 excited my attention. I brought home the branch and placed it 

 in one of my breeding boxes, the lid of which was formed of 

 glass. After a few hours, happening to pass, I was surprised to 

 find that the cocoon had left the place where I had deposited it, 

 and had become attached to the glass, a fine thread from the tail 

 still, however, connecting it to the branch. I anticipated the pos- 

 session of a gigantic Psyche, but after a little time I recollected that 

 I had met with a somewhat similar cocoon figured somewhere 

 in the Linn^an Transactions, and on searching found the paper 

 of the Rev. L. Guilding, which left me without a doubt of its 

 being a new " Oiketicus." Taking another peep into the box I 

 found my new acquaintance with its head out, and perceived that 

 it corresponded exactly with the figure given in his plate 2, in form, 

 and nearly in size (fig. 6), but differed slightly in the dark mark- 

 ings on the head. The mode of marching along the glass was 

 very curious : swinging its head from side to side, it attached by 

 its spinnerets twenty minute threads, a quarter of an inch long, 

 to the glass ; it then hooked its fore claws into the loop, ad- 

 vanced a step and begun another set 0"2 from the former ; in this 

 way it marched about three inches in half an hour, I'eaching the 

 wooden side of the box, across which it descended by a precisely 

 similar course of operations : when disturbed it immediately re- 

 tired within the cocoon, the funnel-shaped membrane or hood, 

 attached to the more rigid front of the cocoon, closing up the 

 mouth ; when it has advanced to such a distance that the fine 

 thread which steadies the smaller extremity or tail becomes too 

 much tightened to permit a farther stretching, it is disengaged and 

 a new attachment formed to some other body, usually a leaf or 

 fine twig, which will yield an inch or two without the thread 

 breaking. I supplied fresh leaves (C decumana) every day ; in 

 about two weeks I found it attached to the glass by the extremity 



