ON THE NEUROPTEROUS GENUS RAPHIDIA. 143 



1900: ''Found a larva of Raphidia sj}. in burrows in holly, a 

 solid old stem with the bark not very firmly affixed. This larva 

 was quite healthy and lively on 5th March, 1901. It had just 

 become a nymph in no enveloping case on 20th April, 1901. It 

 appeared to attain greater degrees of activity the nearer it 

 approached maturity. On May 4th it was able to hold on to a 

 piece of wood with its pupal legs, move its abdomen and head 

 freely in a vertical direction. On May 6th a female R. notata 

 emerged ; it had just evacuated its nymph skin at 10 a.m. and 

 the wings were already of normal length, but the wings, legs, 

 ovipositor, antennae, clypeus, and cibaria were quite pellucid- 

 white, the abdomen and thorax were red, the head and two 

 apical tarsal joints being the only black parts. The insect took 

 till 4 p.m. to attain perfection, and did not move a fraction of an 

 inch the whole time ; the day was normally warm, damp and 

 dull. The nymph itself had crawled to a horizontal position 

 in its box, where, however, it was not very firmly attached, as on 

 the box being jarred it fell to the bottom. The larva had 

 gnawed a narrow and shallow ridge in the very hard holly-wood 

 enclosed with it during the winter." 



Waterhouse says (Trans. Ent. Soc. i.) that the larva of this 

 genus lives in the bark, and Westwood suggests that this was be- 

 cause they were preparing a retreat for their pupation, believing 

 them from the oral structure to be predacious. McLachlan says 

 (E.M.M. 1894, p. 186) that they are found in dead wood and 

 under bark ; he kept one larva : "it is fed occasionally with a 

 fly, and seems to thrive ; I suspect it feeds at night, for I have 

 never been able to detect it in the act " ; nor does he say that 

 the flies were actually devoured. At all events my larva had 

 nothing but a ligneous diet from November to May ! 



A further examination of the larva- skin reveals that the 

 nymph probably emerged from the castaneous, hard and chiti- 

 nous prothorax, which is split longitudinally throughout its 

 disc, as also is the basal portion of the similarly conformed 

 head as far as the region occupied in the imago by the ocelli ; 

 the dull white larval abdomen appears to have been shuffled off 

 and in no way fractured ; it is now strongly curled ventrally. 

 Its mandibles have the apex much more elongate and acuminate 

 than is figured by Westwood (Mod. Class, ii. 56, Fig. Ixvi. 9), 

 with the inner basal tooth much more prominent and sub- 

 rectangular. The cast nymph-skin, carded when soft, is trans- 

 parent, flavescent, and 12 mm. in length ; all the members, in- 

 cluding the antennae and remarkably short recurved terebra, are 

 perfectly free, and the hind legs are in no way impeded by the 

 wings, which in the nymph measure 5 mm., and in the imago, 

 which emerged from it, 13 mm. in length. 



