36 Entomological news. [Feb., *o2 



debora is shown to have great vitality, for if it is kept in a dark 

 box some hours after being born, it can remain even for twenty- 

 six days without taking any food, and, if left free at the end of 

 this time, flies swiftly without showing any exhaustion. I do 

 not know any Lepidoptera that can bear so many days of cap- 

 tivity^ and abstinence. Is there any relation between the vitality 

 of the insect and the vegetable it feeds on ? I do not know it. 



When the female of the Eumtsus debora has already chosen 

 the tender leaf of a Cycad, it lays, one bj' one, on the under 

 side of one of the most tender small leaves about 50 or 60 

 spherical eggs, with half-millimetre diameters, of white color, 

 covered by a resistant skin and invested by a sticky substance 

 that makes them adhere to the surface of the leaf. 



If time is propitious — I mean if days are warm — after a while 

 and by sunlight action the shells are broken, and some small 

 worms of reddish color appear, which begin to gnaw the tender 

 part of the leaf nearest them. Thirty or forty days after, the 

 caterpillars have reached their full development. The cater- 

 pillar presents an elongated body, half-cylindrical, with the 

 flat part toward the extremities, 20 millimetres long by 5 in di- 

 ameter, divided transversely by nine red bands that are white- 

 striped on their superior part. All the skin is full of short 

 and sparse hairs. The caterpillar has sixteen legs disposed in 

 pairs, being the three forelegs, real ones and the others false. 



The first three segments of the caterpillar's body present 

 greater consistence than the others. The real legs are the 

 ones which the animal will conserve at last. 



The false legs are short and fleshy processes which in their 

 apex contain a cavity that, acting as an air-tight cell, assists 

 the animal admirably with its locomotion movements. It has 

 a dark-gray head and is endowed with great mobility ; eyes 

 are small and simple. The mouth is provided with powerful 

 jaws with which it cuts the .strong leaves of the plant it lives 

 on. The caterpillar undergoes during life even three changes, 

 and, to leave its old tegument, remains inactive without taking 

 any food until two or three days. 



At the end of forty-five days the caterpillar loses its bright- 

 ness of color and associates with its neighbors to seek for the 



