240 Siebold's Remarks on the Psychida. 



From Reutti I afterwards learnt that he had ascertained that 

 the Artemisia vulgaris, which grew in the vicinity of the head quar- 

 ters of the spiral cases, on the castle-hill at Freiburg, was the 

 food of the larvae belonging to these cases. 



From all that has hitherto been ascertained of these case-bearers 

 I am inclined to suspect that the vermiform insects, so like the 

 females of Psyche, which escape from the pupae of these case- 

 bearers, are not truly females, but correspond to sexless nurses, 

 as in Talceporia lichenella, Zell., which, sine concubitu, can produce 

 young. 



I have long cherished this suspicion, since I had observed, partly 

 in Freiburg and partly here, several hundred cases, which never 

 produced a single male moth, but either a Chalets, Pteromalince, 

 or a vermiform female. Each case which I collected spun-up, 

 and afterwards opened, I had become certain beforehand that it 

 contained a female pupa or the remains of one. Many pupae ap- 

 peared empty or dried up ; some were filled with eggs, or, to my 

 astonishment, with hexapod larvae. 



It follows from this, that on the exclusion of the so-called fe- 

 male of Psyche helix, the pupa skin remains in the case, and that 

 the female understands to lay its eggs in the empty pupa- skin, 

 wherein the animal reminds one of Psyche and Fumea. From a 

 later communication received from Reutti I perceived that he has 

 observed the same thing; indeed that from such cases, of which 

 he had isolated the larvae and allowed them to undergo their trans- 

 formations, he had afterwards found the pupa-skins filled with 

 young larvae, from which it becomes a certainty that these case- 

 bearers with spiral cases furnish nurse-formed beings, the sexual 

 individuals of which have not yet been discovered. 



