MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 541 



doff its purple plumage when once it has assumed it. I must have seen dozens 

 of purple cocks during every month of the year. Although the purple Honey- 

 sucker visits Lahore (where I am now stationed) in great numbers in the hot 

 weather, it only stays to breed, and will leave us in September. I am there- 

 fore, not likely, for some time to come, to be able to settle the matter from 

 personal observation. Can any of the members of the Society give information 



on the subject ? 



D. DEW^R (I. C. S.). 

 Lahore, Wh July 1906. 



No. XXXIV.-SOME NOTES ON HETEROCERA. 



Perhaps the greatest charm in the study of Entomology lies in the number 

 of opportunities offered to the observer, be he savant or tyro, of adding some- 

 thing new to our knowledge of this subject. 



It is therefore with the hope of being able, though a mere tyro, of providing 

 a crumb of novelty that I venture to narrate the following incidents in the 

 life history of probably most moths. 



While quartered during the years 1904 and 1905 in the Mussooree Hills, I 

 reared from the egg large numbers of that handsome moth Acleas selene and 

 also collected among others several cocoons of Anthercea roylei and Caligula 

 simla. All these three ppecies have an expanse of from 5£" to 7". Their 

 cocoons however differ widely in structure ; those of A. selene being of close 

 texture, impervious to light and having a single envelope ; those of C. simla 

 being loosely, though stroi gly, woven and having the appearance of a roughly 

 made, fine-meshed net, while those of A. roylei have a double envelope and 

 are woven of the toughest possible silk. My cocoons numbering some 250, 1 

 kept suspended in rows across the muslin curtains of a little room set apart 

 as a workshop. 



During 1904 I was content to allow the moths to escape from their cocoons 

 unobserved and to then kill and set them without further ado. The following 

 year, however, curiosity prompted me to try and discover how such an 

 apparently ill-adapted creature as a moth contrived to break through the 

 tough walls of its cocoon without injury, I enquired of two eminent natura- 

 lists of my acquaintance, one a well-known member of the Linnaean Society, 

 and was told that the process was not exactly known but that it was believed 

 the imago exuded some secretion which dissolved the silken wall of its prison. 

 In the first week of September last year several moths hatched without my 

 being present at the moment. One day, however, while engaged in carpentering, 

 my attention was drawn by a very audible scratching to one of the A. selene 

 cocoons suspended before the window in front of me. It was moving spas- 

 modically and I commenced to watch it carefully. The scratching was 

 regular and persistent and after 10 minutes or so I noticed two tiny points 

 projecting through the apex of the cocoon. 



Presently as the silk became more and more worn I was able to see the 

 struggling imago through it and it became evident that the exit was being 



