252 NEPHOPTEHYX ABIETELLA. 



accumulated at the bottom, yet no larva made its 

 appearance till the afternoon of the 22nd, when I 

 beheld it hanging down from the cone apparently 

 examining the smooth surface of the jam pot. 



After taking the note of its size and appearance 

 before recorded and securing its portrait, I put it into 

 a pot prepared with earth at the bottom, on which 

 were placed a fresh cone and an old brown one, with 

 some pieces of touchwood, and after it was placed on 

 the old cone it examined the surface of the fresh one 

 for a moment or two, and returning to the old one 

 descended to the peaty earth, over which it crept to 

 the touchwood, amongst which it speedily disap- 

 peared. 



The second inhabitant of the cone (now on the- 

 28th) continued to feed, as was evidenced by grains 

 of frass continuing to accumulate at the bottom of the 

 pot beneath the hole by which its co-tenant had pre- 

 viously left it. 



Mr. Wood tells me " that several larvse will often 

 agree together in a single cone, when probably they 

 take care not to encroach on each other. I had no 

 less than six in one cone ; for some reason or other 

 they had preferred it to others that were alongside. 

 They will, however, fight sometimes. A full-fed fellow 

 emerged one day, and as it was smaller than any of 

 the others had been I thought it might not have done 

 feeding, and introduced it into an opening that was 

 apparently tenantless ; the animal went in readily 

 enough to half its length and then began to back out, 

 which I tried to prevent, but it would not do, and the 

 next moment the larva wriggled out and lay for an 

 appreciable time twisting on the cone, held bull-dog 

 fashion by the neck by another larva. Blood was 

 drawn." 



Fig. 23, 1877. In this year, on the 7th of Septem- 

 ber, I received from Dr. Wood a spruce fir-cone con- 

 taining a much finer larva than either I had seen pre- 

 viously ; it measured rather more than seven-eighths 



