OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 129 



the word it can not be called excrement, as it is evidently secreted for 

 the especial purpose of oviposition, and differs considerably from the 

 pure excrement. To attach and cover one egg requires about a half 

 hour's time. The operation is generally performed during the night, 

 and I have known the same female to fix thirteen between a May sun- 

 set and sunrise. The covering is undoubtedly intended to shield the 

 egg from marauders, and especially from the depredations of the 

 males, judging from the facts recorded in the subsidiary note, on 

 Clilatnys. * 



In from fourteen to eighteen days the egg hatches, the young larva 

 opening its way to the light of day through the attached end of its 

 egg-shield, and doubtless cutting itself loose from its anchorage and 

 tumbling to the ground. The covering which had protected the egg 

 now serves as cradle to the young larva, which pokes out its head and 

 legs and craws actively about by a series of curious jerks, with the 

 egg-case hoisted in the air — withdrawing the exposed parts upon the 

 slightest disturbance. 



The Chrysomelians so very generally feed on the green and grow- 

 ing leaves of plants that they have been popularly characterized as 

 " Leaf-feeders." Our present subject, however, departs from the habit 

 of the family, as do many of its close connections, in that it feeds on 

 dead and decaying leaves in its earlier larval days.* Nor does it 

 seem to be particular as to the kind of leaf, as I have furnished it with 

 sumach, sassafras, oak, apple and other kinds, and it fed alike on tho 

 parenchyma of all, but would not touch the green leaves of the same 

 plants. 



The larva, though growing slowly, is soon cramped in the cradle 

 of its birth, and must needs have more room. This it gets by mixing 

 particles of earth into a mortar, by means of saliva, and plastering 

 the mixture with its jaws to the rim formed by the opening of the 

 case. As the animal increases in size its case thus enlarges from the 

 bottom, the material being molded into irregular longitudinal ridges, 

 and always surmounted at the top by the old, partially covered egg- 

 attached end, and makes a house of the egg-case, gradually adding to it, with^age. This apical egg- 

 case, may always he distinguished by its darker color, and finer and more glutinous material, from the 

 rest of the larval house, which is more or less covered witli the leaf-down of its food-plant, and is, in 

 consequence, on the Sjxamore, quite grayish and pilose. The larva, extricated from its case, is well 

 represented in the illustration (37), though the end of body should be more curved underneath . It 

 eats irregular holes in the leaves, and when about to transform, securely fastens the case to the same. 

 The pupa is of a brUliant flesh color, and characterized chiefly by having at the end of the body two 

 short, blunt, dorsal tubercles directed upward and outward, and two terminal processes in a line with 

 body, more proximate and pointed. The beetles issue through a lid, smoothly cut from the pointed free 

 end of the case, and they feed on the same plants by skeletonizing the leaves. 



*Some Clythrid larvre even feed on dead animal matter. 



