Insects. 539 



in the bits of stick which were stuck about the case so profusely, and 

 of which I could not discover the use. I at first thought they might 

 have been the living twigs to which the web was first fastened as a 

 stay until it attained form, and that they had afterwards been cut off 

 by the caterpillar, to free the case when finished : but if so, there would 

 surely have been but two or three, instead of a dozen or two. Per- 

 haps they were intended to make it more rough-looking and less ob- 

 servable. Those cases which I had cut partly open were soon accu- 

 rately closed nearly as tight and strong as ever, by an internal coat of 

 silk over the incision. 



On the evening of the 5th of October T. was surprised at seeing in 

 my box a little moth, which was fluttering his wings so swiftly as to 

 render them almost invisible. On his becoming still, I observed that 

 the wings were almost totally destitute of scales, and consequently 

 transparent : the posterior pair very minute. On the posterior wings 

 there was a very narrow band on the inner margin, which was clothed 

 with black scales, and a few were sparingly scattered in an undefined 

 stripe that ran down the anterior wings. The head, thorax and abdo- 

 men, which were somewhat robust, were thickly clothed with black 

 down ; the antennae doubly pectinate, curled and very short. The 

 moth measured half an inch in length and an inch in spread of wing. 

 It flew but a very few inches at a time, but constantly (or nearly so) 

 vibrated its wings. When these organs were not in motion they were 

 deflexed, and the abdomen was turned up. It was a male, and had 

 proceeded from one of the smaller cases, at the mouth of which the 

 pupa-skin was left, protruding about two-thirds of its length. Another 

 pupa had just begun to make its head visible from the mouth of ano- 

 ther cocoon. I then opened some of the larger female cocoons, but 

 in most of them the pupae were filled with a soft satiny dust, of a buff- 

 brown colour. In one cocoon I found the female evolved from the 

 pupa ; the exuviae of which were likewise filled with this downy dust. 

 The perfected female had little of the form of a moth, but appeared 

 like a transparent bag of soft eggs; the anterior parts were dark brown 

 and the limbs were very minute, flabby and almost undistinguishable, 

 looking nearly decomposed. No wings were to be seen, and there 

 was not a vestige of down upon the body, except two or three tufts 

 near the tail, which resembled that left in the pupa-skin. I should 

 have supposed that it was dead, but that at intervals there were cer- 

 tain motions which indicated the possession of vitality. " Take it for 

 all in all," larva, pupa and imago, this was the most singular moth 

 that ever it was my fortune to make acquaintance with. The Oiketi- 



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