210 Mr. R. MacLachlan's Monograph of 



Legs long and slightly spinose ; ungues broad and 

 strongly serrated within ; indvilli large and spongy. 



Wings long and narrow, the posterior slightly shorter 

 and broader than the anterior ; transverse veinlets rather 

 numerous towards the apex, forming elongate cellules ; 

 the sub-costa joins the costa beyond the middle* in the 

 anterior wings, and far before the middle in the pos- 

 terior ; the radius soon furcates, and forms an elongated 

 discoidal cell ; the basal portion of the wing has but few 

 transverse veinlets (PI. XI. fig. 7). 



Though so common, the earlier stages of these insects 

 were long a mystery. Stein first threw light on the 

 subject by the discovery of the pupa, which he described 

 and figured in Wiegmann^s Archives for 1838, and their 

 life-history has since been published by that pains-taking 

 Neuropterist, Herr Brauer, who has given the result of 

 his observations in the Sitz. Akad. Wissensch. of Vienna 

 for 1851, and in the Verh. zool.-bot. Gesell. of Vienna 

 for 1863. Vfith the idea that a detailed account of Herr 

 Brauer's discovery may be interesting to British Ento- 

 mologists, I here give a translation of his latter paper, 

 so far as the larva is concerned. 



'' The imagines may be kept alive with meat for about 

 a month ; those that die are at once devoured by the sur- 

 vivors. Several days after pairing, the female lays her 

 eggs (never many, twelve at the utmost) in crevices of 

 damp earth, and surrounds them with a viscid fluid. 

 They are at first white, afterwards yellowish-gray, and 

 their chorion is marked with net-like ridges." 



^'The larvae emerge from the egg in eight days. They 

 are then |'" long, and ^"' broad. Immediately after 

 emerging, they are white with black eyes, but soon be- 

 come gray. On the whole they are then similar to full- 

 grown larvee, but are distinguished by the much thicker 

 antennae, and by the first to seventh abdominal segmen^ts 

 having two warts above, each bearing one jointed bristle, 

 which are also seen on the eighth to the tenth segments, 

 but are there larger, and there are two on the eighth 

 and ninth segments ; these latter remain in all stages of 

 growth, whereas the former are thrown ofi" at the first 

 moult." 



eighth. The detached abdomen of a fresh example of P. germanica 

 appeared to show clearly a rudimentary basal segment ; see Plate XI. 

 fig. 7 a, indicated at a. 



* This refers only to British species ; in the Continental P. variabilis, 

 and in many exotic species, the sub-costa scarcely extends beyond the 

 middle of the costa. 



