EARLY STAGES OF COLEOPHORA ORNATIPENNELLA, HB. 189 



pitting. At the micropylar end is a mamilla surrounded by a slight 

 collar. At the time of hatching, about eight or ten days in hot weather, 

 the larva bores through the egg shell and eats its way into the receptacle. 

 The egg shell partly filled with black frass remains attached to the 

 receptacle long after the larva has disappeared inside, and is usually 

 the only sign of the larva's presence in the calyx. In the calyx I have 

 also found a dipterous larva and a gall maker, which distorts the re- 

 ceptacle. The newly hatched larva is of the usual type of this genus, 

 and pale ochreous with a nearly black head. There is a deep brown 

 plate on the prothorax and a small plate on the mesothorax. The 

 larva I think passes nearly all its first stadium in the receptacle, and 

 then enters one of the seed vessels and there changes to the second 

 stadium. On cutting open the receptacle the larva's tracks are plainly 

 visible, and I found one larva in a seed vessel just changing its skin 

 before any of the seed had been eaten. This larva leaves its excrement 

 in its mine. The seed vessel at this time is composed of a thin grey 

 or purplish covering beneath which is a rather hard white shell. In 

 the hollow of this shell the seed lies. By placing her egg on the 

 receptacle the moth provides the larva with an easy, and perhaps the 

 only, means of reaching the interior of the seed vessel. The young 

 larva could not bore through the hard white shell above mentioned, 

 but at the base of the seed vessel, where it rests on the receptacle, 

 there is a hole in the shell closed only by cellular tissue, and here the 

 larva enters easily. The second larval stage is passed inside the seed 

 vessel, whether the larva is content with one seed I am unable to say, 

 but I think it is. The larva in the second instar differs little from 

 that in the first instar, it is of course larger, browner, and I was able to 

 see that it, like lixella, has four pairs of abdominal prolegs. It feeds on 

 the seed, and if a vessel containing a larva be opened the larva, the 

 partly consumed seed, and an amount of excrement may be seen. 

 When the larva approaches the end of the second stadium it clears the 

 seed vessel of all rubbish and severs it from the plant. The vessel then 

 becomes the larval case, and in it the caterpillar wanders away until it 

 finds some suitable place to which to fix its case. It then undergoes a 

 second change of skin, after which it unfastens its case and crawls 

 away till it finds some convenient situation where it spins up its case 

 firmly with silk, and so remains, I suppose, till the following spring. 

 The larva in its third instar is still browner in colour than in the two 

 previous instars, and the head is brown, but the shields on the thorax 

 remain black. The full sized seed vessel when used as a case is 

 somewhat hemispherical, one face being convex while the opposite one 

 is rather flattened. It is 2mm. long and of nearly the same width, 

 while the depth from back to front is from 1mm. to l^mm. They vary 

 a little in size. It is very deep brown in colour, and there are some 

 vein-like marks on the convex side. As a Coleophorid case it differs 

 from any that I have ever seen in that it has only one opening, which 

 is at the top of the case when that is spun up. When the larvae, in 

 their cases began to leave the Salvia I provided them with grass, but 

 they did not feed any more and spun up on the grass at the top of their 

 cage, where they still remain. I have searched for these inconspicuous 

 cases in the field on grass stems, Salvia stems, and on the earth, but 

 without any success. I presume that the larva, in spring, affixes this 

 case to a blade of grass, and after mining a short time cuts out its well 



