S4 Indian Museum Notes. . [ Yol. HI. 



ease of the so-called threads on the outside of the stem. Hitherto I 

 had supposed that the thread-like protuberance was produced by the 

 female insect depositing a drop of viscous fluid on the egg and raising 

 tlie abdomen, so as to stretch the same iuto a thin thread which the 

 action of the air would harden. This seemed the more probable, because 

 I had often noticed the females excreting a drop of fluid, and it was 

 moreover borne out by the likeness to the method by which CJirysopa 

 vulgaris (a European insect of the group Neiiroptera) deposits its eggs, 

 except, that in the latter case, the egg is laid on the top of the thread 

 on the outside of a plant stalk. The purpose of the threads was 

 ostensibly to keep these aperture in the stem of the shoot from being 

 closed up by the healing action of the plant, which would suffocate the 

 insect, without some provision of this kind. The idea of the mode of 

 making these threads was so plausible that I had small cause to think 

 that I should gain any more knowledge by testing it more thoroughly. 

 It was, however, exploded by a friend of mine, who accidentally discovered 

 on crushing the body of a female insect that each egg bore two thread- 

 like protuberances at one end exactly similar to those of the deposited 

 egg. This he pointed out to me, and the fact that two of those 

 threads were attached to each egg before being laid was demonstrated 

 in every case by microscopic examination. 



It might be supposed, as the threads are intended to keep open the 

 aperture in the stalk, that the 3'oung larva would emerge between them j 

 by my magnified drawing fi<>-. a, however, it will be seen that it does not 

 do so, as one of the pair of eggs represented has only the upper shell 

 left, showing that the larva emerged from the lower and interior end. 

 Moreover, the stems in which empty egg shells are found will be seen to 

 be hollowed out and brownish in colour ; the core of the stalk having 

 been eaten away, a small amount of gelatinous-looking matter alone 

 remaining, which probably represents the digested portions of the stalk 

 excreted by the larvae. 



The eggs are at first pure white, and are generally found in the green 

 stems o£ tea which have been passed over by the leaf pluckers as being 

 too hard for manufacture. Did the insect content itself with laying in 

 the soft green stems, doubtless it would soon be exterminated on tea 

 gardens where the leaf is not. allowed to run out much. But apparently 

 nature has provided against man, and the eggs are laid in the unpicked 

 slightly-hardened stems. Just previous to the larvse emerging the egij^s 

 become yellowish, the inner or more spherical end being streaked with 

 orange red (representing the legs and antennae of the larvse). 



In the Indian Economic Entomology, Vol. I, No. 4, the female insect 

 only is described ; presumably, therefore, the insect figured to illustrate 

 the description is also a female ; the ovipositor is not shown, however, al- 



