234 Mr. J. O. Westwood's Descriptions, fyc. 



Caput nitidum, parura punctatum. Thorax fere laevis, collari 

 antice magis punctate Abdomen sub lente punctis delica- 

 tissimis undique impressum. Alae apice parum obscuriores, 

 stigmate luteo-fusco, postice magis fusco. 



Fcemina ignota, forsan aptera et mare multo minor. 



XXVII. Remarks on the Psychidse, by Professor C. Th. 

 v. Siebold, published in the Silesian " Bericht uber die 

 Arbeiten der Entomologischen Sektion im Jahre 1850." 

 Translated by H. T. Stainton, Esq. 



[Read October 6th, 1851.] 



I have already endeavoured, in the first year (1849) of the " Zeit- 

 schrift fur wissenschaftliehe Zoologie," to direct the attention of 

 Physiologists and Entomologists to the extremely interesting mode 

 of propagation of the Psychidce, when I maintained that the as- 

 sertion, that the female individuals of the Psychidce could propa- 

 gate without the introduction of the semen of the male, was 

 founded on mistake and error. 



The whole of the peculiar behaviour of these moths in the 

 business of copulation, as well as when laying their eggs, may 

 easily contribute to lead the observer into error, as may be per- 

 ceived from the following. The females of many of these case- 

 bearers, after copulation, lay their eggs in the deserted pupa- shell 

 which remains in the case, and fill it with them tightly from top to 

 bottom, so that if these cases are collected and preserved, one may 

 easily fall into the belief they were the cases in which the females 

 had not yet escaped from the pupa. Consequently, when young 

 larvae afterward crawl out of such cases, one erroneously concludes, 

 that in this instance a female which had been obtained whilst in the 

 pupa state, and therefore had not been impregnated, had sine concu- 

 bitu produced young. But this only concerns the two genera of 

 Psychidce, Psyche and Fumea, and is not the case with the genus 

 Talceporia. I have now arrived at the conviction that the females 

 of the genus Talceporia, which formerly I had not learnt to dis- 

 tinguish strictly from the females of the genus Fumea, can under 

 certain conditions propagate without male intercourse. 



But this occurrence can not be considered as an exception to 

 those physiological laws, according to which all true eggs, in order 



