﻿24 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT 



As a general rule, there is scarcely any variation at all in this matter, 

 each species and even each genus having its peculiar pattern, and all 

 the individuals belonging to a particular species having the network 

 of their wings as exactly similar as the different photographs exe- 

 cuted by a daguerreotypist from the same negative plate. You may 

 take, for instance a thousand, honey-bees, and you will find that in 

 the front wing of every one of them there are exactly one marginal 

 and three submarginal cells, which, however, are all of them shaped 

 very differently from the corresponding cells in any Saw-fly, though all 

 the thousand honey-bees will be found to have them shaped exactly 

 alike, cell corresponding to cell, as in any particular issue of ^5 bank 

 notes, vignette corresponding to vignette and medallion die to medal- 

 lion die. Among the Saw-flies, indeed, as was noticed in the descrip- 

 tion of the Imported Currant worm Fly, the pattern of the wing-vein& 

 in different specimens of the same species varies occasionally a little; 

 but this is the exception and not the rule, and is philosophically of 

 high interest, as showing how one genus may in the course of indefi- 

 nite ages change gradually into another genus. 



"The Native Currant- worm Fly differs in another remarkable 

 point from the Imported Currant-worm Fly. The sexes are here 

 almost exactly alike in their coloration, and with the exception of the 

 legs of the male being a little more marked with black than those of 

 the female, it would not be very easy to distinguish one from the 

 other, but by the usual sexual characters. Hence we have not 

 thought it necessary to give a figure of the male as well as of the 

 female ; whereas in the Imported species the two sexes differ so essen- 

 tially in their coloration that, as already observed, a figure of one 

 would give scarcely an idea of the other." 



ITS HABITS. 



"The larva of the Native Currant-worm Fly (Fig. 9, a) is of a 

 uniform pale green color, without those black dottings which are 

 always found, except after the last molt, in the Imported species. 

 Before the last molt, indeed, the head is of a uniform black color,, 

 though it afterwards has a good deal of green in front ; but the body 

 remains throughout of the same immaculate green shade. It differs 

 also in its habits from the Imported species, never, so far as we can 

 find out, going underground to spin its cocoon, but always spinning 

 that cocoon among the twigs and leaves of the bushes upon which it 

 feeds. 



"This species agrees with the other one in being double-brooded,, 

 the first brood of larvae appearing a-baut the end of June and the^ 



