Vol. Xxii] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS 173 



One day while hunting regal larvae the writer, much to his 

 great delight, found two caterpillars of Sphinx kalmiae feed- 

 ing in a low ash bush. One of them was attempting to cast 

 his skin in the last moult but he was too weak and died. The 

 other was later riddled by microgaster larvae. 



A few larvae each of Daremma undulosa and Ccratouiia am- 

 yntor succumbed to their internal enemies. It seems such a 

 shame that the great caterpillars of our most beautiful moths 

 should suffer so from foes so insignificant. This law of bal- 

 ance in nature probably means much to life in general and cer- 

 tainly to the vegetable world, but it is hard to convince the 

 collector of larvae that his losses are payments to nature of 

 any apparent indebtedness. That the delight which one experi- 

 ences on fiprling some treasure of a larva should be turned to 

 bitter disappointment in the claiming of this same treasure by 

 some parasitic enemy is not much calculated to win an ardent 

 admirer of this same so-called eternal fitness of things. 



The author brought to pupation a fine colony of Sphinx 

 ereniitus larvae from eggs collected by Miss Lulu Berry, of 

 Vinton, Iowa, feeding them through on common peppermint, 

 although the eggs were found on the leaves of bugle weed. 

 There was practically no loss in these larvae. 



From eggs furnished by the same collector and found on 

 the leaves of Enchanter's nightshade, the writer fed the larvae 

 of Amphion nessus on wild grape and secured seven pupae. 



A full grown larva of Smerinthus excaccatus was picked up 

 under a maple tree on November 3d, after a number of frosts 

 and several severe freezes. It fed on the yellowed leaves of 

 soft maple, poplar and apple till November 29th, when it 

 ceased eating and died. Of course, it was kept in a jar in the 

 house by a fire. 



The disappointment in the searches for Papilio larvae in the 

 early part of summer was more than balanced by the abund- 

 ant finds in August and September. 



Harold Davenport handled more than two hundred eggs 

 and larvae of ajax and obtained a goodly number of chrysalids 



