( Ixxxvi ) 



2. The spider apparently feigned death, and took advan- 



tage of an unguarded moment to attempt to escape. 

 It showed no fight at all. 



3. It was not stung. 



" This looks as if we had here a Pompilid of such degraded 

 habits that it has lost the art of stinging its prey to immobility 

 and burying it, and just lays an egg on the external surface 

 while the prey is still at large, like a Tachinid or a Proctotrupid 

 — becoming, in fact, merely an ordinary parasite. 



" What a pity the specimen escaped me. But that's often 

 the way with fossors : they finish the job and fly off when you 

 think there is still more to come, and you have to choose 

 between an incomplete observation on a known species, or a 

 complete observation on an unknown species." 



A small family of P. dardanus, Brown, bred from, the eggs of 

 a. remarkable female parent. — The female parent, captured by 

 Dr. Carpenter in the forest near Kakindu Hill, April 25, 1915, 

 was a rare variety of which but few examples were known. It 

 combined, as Dr. Carpenter pointed out, the patterns of niobe, 

 Auriv., and flanemoides, Trimen. The form niobe, however, 

 was only a trophonius, Westw. (or trophoxissa, Auriv., the 

 western form of trophonius with a slightly different pattern), 

 having the white markings of the fore- wing replaced by orange. 

 But these very markings were also orange in planemoides, and 

 it was probable that their colour in this variety was derived 

 from planemoides rather than from niobe. For when the 

 specimen was examined in a good light it became apparent 

 that these markings were of a paler tint than the rest of the 

 coloured pattern, as if the planemoides orange had been diluted 

 over the precise area occu])ied by the white subapical markings 

 of trophouissa. The exact correspondence as well as the sharp 

 distinction between the paler and deeper orange was very 

 striking. As to the rest of tlie pattern, the hind-wing was 

 frophonissa, the fore-wing planemoides, with the above modifi- 

 cation and with the addition of the trophouissa orange on 

 the basal half of the wing. This tint was much dusted with 

 dark scales in the cell and over a narrow area immediately 

 below it. 



