CIDARIA RETICULATA. 91 



it has nourished itself from one night to another, 

 whether on the flowers or on the leaves of the sub- 

 stituted food of balsam; for at one time the body 

 beyond the thoracic segments would be light bluish- 

 green, at another time pinkish-green, or much suffused 

 with deep pink, and whenever it could return to its 

 natural food would become of a more subdued tint 

 of uniform yellowish-greenish. 



When fall-fed and about to change it contracts in 

 length a little, and appears stouter, while it loses its 

 lively colouring, grows torpid, holds on to any object, 

 occasionally with the anterior legs only, and elevates 

 the hinder legs a little, quite free. This curious posture 

 I observed with the first two larvae of 1876, when the 

 leaves of balsam were removed, and only a mixture of 

 peat earth and leafy mould remained in their cage, 

 and by the next morning (24th of September) both 

 had buried themselves. But in the case of the two 

 larvae I received on the 12th of October, 1877 (one 

 much smaller than the other), I saw in the evening 

 of the 15th that the largest had crept between two 

 leaves of the balsam, and a few reticulated silk threads 

 could just be detected around it, and by the 19th it 

 had evidently made up, as the leaves then withering 

 had become closely twisted together in somewhat of a 

 cylindrical form. At this time the smaller larva, 

 which previously had fed fairly well, appeared to be 

 dead or dying, but on placing it in the sun for a few 

 minutes it revived and seemed lively, but the next 

 morning I saw it had not fed, and was again torpid, 

 and, greatly to my surprise, already showed signs of 

 contraction for pupation as it lay under a small bit of 

 moss, although its previous length had not exceeded 

 five-eighths of an inch, and there on the surface of 

 the earth it became a naked pupa on the 29th, and by 

 the end of November had died and shrivelled up. 



The full-grown larva measures seven-eighths of an 



inch in length, and is of a slender proportion, stoutest 



, at the ninth and tenth segments, from whence it tapers 



