SAC-BEARING LEPIDOPTERA. 35 



the form of very short conical processes, scarcely take any part in 

 them. A dissection which I made of several of these animals, 

 convinced me that I really had female insects before me ; the 

 internal and external organization of their sexual organs being 

 exactly the same as in other females of Psyche. The two sexual 

 orifices presented themselves in all the individuals, as well as the 

 copulative pouch and seminal receptacle, both of which of course 

 were always empty. The eight ovarian tubes only contained a 

 very few eggs. 



Like all other true species of Psyche these female moths de- 

 posited their yellowish eggs in the empty pupa-case, which, in 

 Psyche, always remains behind in the caterpillar-sac ; they then 

 shrivelled up to a very small volume, when they generally left 

 the sac by the above-mentioned lateral aperture and soon after- 

 wards died. 



The unfertilized eggs, concealed in the pupa-case, are also 

 developed in the same year. If a spun-down sac of Psyche 

 Helix be opened in the latter part of the autumn or in winter, 

 we always find from ten to four-and-twenty young, reddish-grey 

 caterpillars in the interior of the pupa-case. On the empty 

 colourless egg-shells, which may be found crushed between the 

 caterpillars, the micropyle is distinctly recognizable under the 

 microscope. 



After I had thus never detected any other mode of reproduc- 

 tion but that by Parthenogenesis in Psyche Helix, it necessarily 

 astonished me that other entomologists should have succeeded 

 in obtaining the males of this species. On a closer examination, 

 however, it appears doubtful whether the moths described as 

 males of Psyche Helix really belong to this species. Thus the 

 male of a Psyche helicinella was figured by Herrich-Schaffer, 

 together with a sac of Psyche Helix*. The moth figured was 

 discovered by Mann in Sicily : as an empty sac of Psyche Helix 

 occurred in its vicinity, Mann supposed that the moth had escaped 

 from this sac. Herrich-SchafFer himself, however, leaves it doubt- 

 ful, whether this spiral sac really belonged to the moth figured 

 by him, saying, " the sac (if really belonging thereto) is like a 

 snail-shell, formed only of grains of sand, without portions of 



* See his Systematische Beschreibung der Schmetterlinge von Europa, Band 

 ii. p. 21. figs. 108, 109. 



D 2 



