68 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
it is probable that the use of the little pear-shaped bodies 
is to form an attraction stronger than that of the scale- 
insects, and thus to secure the attendance of the protective 
ants on the young leaves. As far as I could make out, the 
club-shaped bodies consist mainly of an albuminous sub- 
stance. The ant colonies are founded by fertilised females, 
which may be found frequently in the cells of young imbauba 
plants. Each internode has on the outside, near its upper 
end, a small pit, where the wall of the cell is much thinner 
than anywhere else, and where the female makes a hole by 
which she enters. Soon after this the hole is completely shut 
again by a luxuriant excrescence from its margins, and so it 
remains until about a dozen workers have developed from the 
eggs of the female, when the hole is opened anew from 
within by these workers. It would appear that the female 
ants, living in cells closed all around, must be protected 
against any enemy; but, notwithstanding, a rather large 
number of them are devoured by the grub of a parasitic 
wasp belonging to the Chalcidide. Mr. Westwood has 
observed that the “pupz of the Chalcidide exhibit a much 
nearer approach to the obtected pupe of the Lepidoptera 
than is made by any other Hymenoptera” (‘ Introduction to 
the Modern Classification of Insects,’ part xi. p. 162). Now 
the pupa of the parasite of the imbauba ant is suspended on 
the wall of the cell by its poster or extremity, just like the 
chrysalis of a butterfly—Mr. Darwin; in ‘ Nature’ of 
February 17, 1876. 
Remarks on the Oviposition of Limacodes Asellus.—In the 
early part of last year Mr. W. H. Harwood sent me thirteen 
pupe of this species, from which I reared five female moths 
and seven males, and as I wanted to obtain the eggs I was 
determined to run the risk of allowing them to copulate 
which one pair obligingly did. A female having emerged 
first, a male followed the day afterwards; and in about 
an hour or so after it had emerged they copulated: this took 
place at mid-day. After separation I placed the female in a 
gallipot with a few beech leaves, and covered it over with a 
piece of white silk sarsenet and then with glass, and in two 
or three days I removed the sarsenet and found it bespattered 
with a whitish and glutinous-looking substance, resembling 
gum or varnish ;.and not believing it to be the egg, but some 
7 POR ila picsictiii a re 
