4 STEWART MACDOUGALL—ON THE LIFE-HISTORY 
rather faint and broken white line limiting it on the outer side. 
The body underneath has a drab pubescence with dark brown 
areas. The prosternum and mesosternum and the lower part of 
the sides of the prothorax are almost black in colour. The legs 
and antennez are covered with a nearly uniform drab-coloured 
pubescence, but in some examples the intermediate joints of the 
antennz are more or less dark brown towards the tip. The front 
of the head is also, in some examples, of a dark brown or nearly 
black colour, but this is partly due to the rubbing away of the 
pubescence.” 
The darkening in colour is occasionally very marked. One of 
the females used in my experiment was after a few months quite 
black all along the dorsal surface. The specimen from which 
the above description was taken measured 163 mm., and this is 
an average size. One imago I possess measures 17 mm., but I find 
a number smaller—thus, 14 mm., 12 mm., and one specimen is 
just 10 mm., but this small size was due, I think, to the poorness 
of the food on which the larvz had to subsist. 
DISTRIBUTION, 
It was suspected, and indeed stated, that the natural home of 
Diaxenes dendrobiz was Burmah, and during the year I had an 
opportunity of proving it. In the month of March, at an orchid 
sale in London, a number of plants of Dendrobium nobile were 
bought for the Royal Botanic Garden. These plants were 
imported for the sale from Burmah. When they reached the 
Botanic Garden, before being added to the collection, they were 
examined carefully, and in some of the pseudo-bulbs larvze were 
got which were bred up to the pupa stage, the resulting imagines 
being of Dzaxenes dendrobti. 
THE EGG. 
The egg is like a very tiny sausage, rounded off towards the 
ends. It measures 3} mm. in length, and is 1 mm. broad at its 
widest part. 
There is a well-marked areolation on the thick shell, giving to 
the egg examined under the microscope a honeycomb-appearance. 
The pattern is hexagonal and pentagonal, but this becomes 
modified at the ends of the egg. In colour the egg showed a 
pale whitish-green tinge as it lay in the tissue of the pseudo-bulb. 
Be eT MNT eee ee oe 
