118 REPORT 4, UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSSON. 



camp near Enterprise, Fla., I was greatly annoyed by the appearance of 

 these flies within the paper boxes where I kept the insects collected by 

 me. These insects were killed by leaving them in the cyanide bottle for 

 not less than 12 hours. I never noticed any Phoras in perfectly tight 

 boxes, and they infested only such not perfectly tight boxes as con- 

 tained large insects, especially Orthoptera, which in the moist air of a 

 Florida rainy season are very difficult to dry and which were in a state 

 of slight decomposition. The larvae of these flies either fed externally 

 upon the softer parts of the dead insects, or internally, and the puparia 

 were either formed on the outside of the insects or simply fastened to 

 any part of the box. On my second trip to Florida I had similar ex- 

 perience, though I was better prepared for the attacks of Phora, a lib- 

 eral and frequent use of carbolic acid doing good service in keeping the 

 flies out. Being thus familar, or at least believing myself familiar, with 

 the habits of this Phora, I was not astonished to see it around my 

 breeding jars and pill boxes with insects during my stay in Columbus, 

 Tex., during the summer of 1879, and considered it as a matter of course 

 to see the flies emerging from the jars where I kept chrysalides of Aletia, 

 a portion of which I knew to be rotten. It never occurred to me then 

 that this Phora would ever be considered as a parasite of Aletia. Af- 

 ter Professor Gomstock had declared it as such, 1 paid more attention 

 to the insect during my stay in Selma. A number of sound Aletia 

 chrysalides were crushed and put in ajar which was partly open. Sev- 

 eral Phoras were seen in the jar 24 hours afterwards, and four days 

 later the rotting mass was alive with the fly larvae. Another lot of 

 sound chrysalides was crushed outdoors in their webs, but only two of 

 them were found afterwards to be infested with Phora, the others were 

 either eaten out by the ants or simply dried up without attracting any- 

 thing. Larvae of FJiora aletice were not unfrequently found in the last 

 week of August and the first week of September in chrysalides of Aletia 

 which hung down from the naked stems and leaf-ribs, the worms hav- 

 ing previously utterly defoliated the plants. Many hundreds of these 

 chrysalids which are thus unprotected from the rays of the sun or 

 from the rain were examined by me during the time just mentioned, and 

 by far the greatest part of them — at least three-fourths of the whole 

 number — proved to be rotten, the contents being a light brown, badly 

 smelling fluid. No parasitic larvae could be discovered within, and the 

 chrysalides showed no outward signs whatever of having been attacked 

 by anyinsect. The remaining one-fourth of these chrysalides were either 

 in healthy condition, or killed by some enemy (mostly by ants and Po- 

 disus), or infested with parasites {Chalcis ovata and TacMna), or con- 

 tained Sarcophaga and Phora larvae. I have to emphasize the fact 

 that the chrysalides containing Phora larvae contained the same rotten 

 fluid of the same disgusting smell as the majority of the chrysalids 

 mentioned above. From 150 specimens of such chrysalides put in a 

 large glass jar I obtained only 5 or 6 moths, a number of the above- 



