164 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



largest is between Harsol and Morasa, and is said to consist of 360 

 lakelets. I shouldn't wonder if there were really more, but not one 

 of them is itself of any great size. The Khara Lake, which is the 

 largest, may have an area of nearly 100 acres in the rains, but 

 is nowhere 6 feet deep. 



NOTE ON HESTIA MALABARICA. 

 By Capt. T. Macpherson, Bo. S.C. 



As nothing is known regarding the early history of Hestia Mala- 

 barica, it may interest members of the Natural History Society to 

 learn that I have succeeded in rearing it from the eggs. On the 

 28th of February last, I was in Camp at Devimani on the Kanara 

 G hauts. On the afternoon of that day, whilst walking through a patch 

 of evergreen forest, I noticed a $ Hestia, apparently intent on find- 

 ing a place to deposit her eggs. I therefore stood still and watched 

 her. She fluttered about for a considerable time round a tree that 

 was thickly covered by a creeper with large cordate leaves. At last, 

 when I was almost tired of watching her, she settled on one of these 

 leaves and deposited an egg on the under surface. This I quickly 

 secured, and on a careful examination of a number of other leaves 

 of the same plant I discovered some 8 or 10 more freshly deposit- 

 ed eggs (I give illustrations of the egg, the full grown grub and 

 the pupa). The egg is always deposited singly on the under sur- 

 face of the leaf; it is white, oval, about y 1 ^ inch long by j$ 

 broad, attached to the leaf by one of the small ends and marked 

 with about 22 longitudinal rows of hexagonal indentations. The 

 eggs hatched out in from 6 to 7 days, and about 2 days before the 

 grub emerged its black head could be distinctly seen through the 

 thin shell. The larva emerges from a little to one side of the apex 

 of the egg, eating only a small hole sufficient for its exit; it then 

 eats its cast off shell for its first meal. 



On emerging the grub is about T 3 6 inch long, skin transparent 

 pale yellow, head and feet black, and through the skin are visible 

 the white rings of the more mature grub, also the two black dots on 

 the back of the 2nd segment. It has 4 minute pairs of fleshy ten- 

 tacles arranged as in the more mature grub. 



In a few days the first skin is cast and the grub then assumes the 

 colours and markings which it retains until it changes to pupa. It 

 eats its cast skin in the first two changes only. 



