@7Q2. - on caterpillars. 103 
the had one son, James, who died unmarried. Besides © 
‘the offices formerly mentioned, he was made one of 
the Scotch judges in 1624, and commifsioner of forfeit- 
‘ures in Scotland: in 1674, he wasappointed lord justice 
_-clerk in Scotland, which he enjoyed only two years, 
His body was brought to Leith, and was intered in 
‘the family burying place near Lanark. 
EXPLANATION OF THE PHENOMENON RESPECTING THE 
CATERPILLAR. SEE BEE VOL. xi. p. 287. 
Str,  —- To the Editor of the Bee. 
‘Tue curious phenomenon: which your friend has so 
accurately described, is a circumstance in the 
-economy of nature, with which all collectors of in- 
‘sects are well acquainted.—The caterpillar, which 
thas produced so abundantly, had been stung, as the 
entomologists term it, by the zchneumon glomeratus 
of Linnzus ; 7. e. the parent ichneumon had deposi- 
ted its eggs in the body of the caterpillar, where 
they hatched, and fed till the time of their change 
into the chrysalis state, at which period they spin 
the little cocoons. These will produce a small fly the 
next spring ; as the season is now so late, that I think 
there is little chance of their hatching this autumn. 
The tribe of ichneumon is very numerous, and the 
different species prove extremely troublesome to col- 
lectors; as they frequently are disappointed at the time 
a valuable caterpillar is expected to undergo its me- 
tamorphosis, it having previously been chosen by the 
parent ichneumon as a proper nidus for her valuable 
progeny, It is very remarkable, that though thecater- 
