PARASITIC ON SPIDERS. 237 
smaller than the female bred from the larva found on 
the female Epeira antriada captured in April 1838 ; 
its antenne also had each twenty-two joints only ; 
but these differences may be regarded as sexual pecu- 
liarities merely ; the close resemblance of the two in- 
sects in other particulars, and the exact correspondence 
in the economy of their larvae, leave no doubt about 
their specific identity. 
On the 26th of October, 1841, I caught an adult 
female Linyphia minuta with a parasitic larva, which 
had completed its moulting, fixed upon its abdomen, 
and enclosing it in a phial, I fed it with flies. The 
larva increased in growth till the lst of February, 
1842, when it destroyed the spider, which was much 
reduced in size, and having quitted it, attached itself 
to the underside of a slight, horizontal sheet of web 
previously constructed in the phial by the spider. In 
this situation it remained till the evening of the same 
day, when it commenced spinning its cocoon, and on 
the evening of the day following had completed it. 
This cocoon was composed of brown silk of a com- 
pact texture, and was of an oblong, quadrilateral form 
tapering to its extremities, one of which was more 
pointed than the other. 
As this insect did not go through its final meta- 
morphosis, I am unable to decide whether it differed 
specifically from those already described or not; but 
it is very probable that it did not, as the dissimilarity 
in the colour of the silk composing its cocoon may be 
