1895] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. Ill 



a little window, scarcely larger than a pin's head. This epidermal 

 window-pane serves to keep out all foes, and, as we shall see 

 later, facilitates the emergence of the moth. Within its capacious 

 one-windowed chamber it now proceeds to build its hammock, 

 within which it changes to a pupa. The walls of the cone- like 

 home have been cut away in C to show this pupal hammock. 

 No one has seen the larva swing this hammock. But it is proba- 

 bly accomplished by first spinning a single-cable bridge of several 

 silken threads from a point near the window to another point, 

 sufficiently distant, on the opposite wall of the chamber. When 

 satisfied that this silken cable is well anchored at each end, the 

 larva doubtless stretches itself along the cable near the centre, 

 with its head toward the window, and then proceeds to spin about 

 itself a silken hammock — its cocoon. The cocoon is white in 

 color, and has several ribs running its whole length. 



The pupa rests in its silken hammock for nearly a month; then, 

 with the aid of a beak-shaped projection on its head, it tears 

 open the end of the cocoon, and the window is soon reached. 

 One cannot but marvel at the foresight of the little larva in 

 making this window, then fastening one hammock rope at its 

 edge, and, finally, always getting into the hammock with its head 

 toward the window. The beaked head of the pupa soon bursts 

 through the window-pane and projects itself half-way out of the 

 opening, and soon the pretty moth emerges and flits away to 

 find some secure hiding place for the Winter. Some of the 

 conical homes containing the pupal hammocks became dry and 

 hard in my cages, and the pupae were then unable to break 

 through the window. When I broke some of the windows the 

 moths emerged freely. Thus the little windows are made pri- 

 marily for the purpose of facilitating the emergence of the adult 

 insect. And, as Rennie says, " In order to render this little door 

 easy to be found, the caterpillar, as if foreseeing that the blind 

 pupa could not otherwise discover it, fixes one of the suspensory 

 threads near its margin, guided by which the insect makes its 

 exit with the utmost ease,' for the head is uniformly swung up by 

 the door thread." 



Hiibner found the cones on Privet ; I have thus far seen them 

 only on Ash. There is apparently but one brood of the insect 

 m a year. Each year, as I look from my office window and see 

 a few of these peculiar cones on the Ash tree, I am more and 

 more impressed with the almost human intelHgence displayed by 

 this little hammock-maker. 



