1897.] Embryology. 817 
fully packed layer or bed of chip, sometimes in the bark but generally 
at the end of the branch galley in the wood.” 
Jn some species the ambrosia is only grown in certain chambers of 
peculiar construction. In many species it appears to be necessary that 
the sap of the tree should be in a state of ferment and the beetles will 
sometimes attack wine and ale casks. “In the care which they give 
their young and in the methodical and complex provisions which they 
make for the welfare of the colony, these beetle display the character- 
istics of true social insects, such as are known among bees, wasps, ants 
and termites, but which have not hitherto been found to exist among 
any other representives of the order Coleoptera.” 
The eggs of some species are laid in clusters of ten or twelve loosely 
in the galleries, and the young wander freely about feeding on the 
ambrosia. In other species each larva is contained in a cell of wood 
the excavation of which is began by the mother but completed by the 
partly grown larva. In this case they are fed by the mother beetle 
who keeps the entrance to this cell closed with a plug of ambro- 
sia. The males of some species are small and wingless and fertiliza- 
tion of the female takes place in the burrow. In others the male 
is large and winged and accompanies the female in her flight to 
found new colonies. Should the number of beetles in a colony be 
diminished by accident or disease the food fungus soon chokes up the 
galleries and remaining inhabitants soon die of suffocation. In the case 
of the wingless males this would soon take place when abandoned by the 
females did they not unite in certain galleries and by keeping the 
fungus cropped, prolong for a time their useless existence.—W. F. F. 
The Brown-Tailed Moth.—There has recently been formed in 
England a “ committee for the protection of insects in danger of exter- 
mination ” and a list of the species which they desire to protect has been 
published. Among them, are a few species like Melitea athalia or 
M. cinzia or Lycena arion which are perfectly innoxious and confined 
to a few isolated localities, for which it would not be unreasonable on 
the part of the true butterfly lovers to ask for protection against “ pot 
hunters” or those who collect them merely for their value for sale or 
exchange. But there are others on the list and among them the 
“brown tailed moth ” (Euproctis chrysorrhea) which will probably be 
included in the next list of American lepidoptera. 
In a late bulletin Prof. C. H. Fernald has given the history of this 
Species in America with a short history of its life and descriptions of its 
Stages. The moth itself belongs to the same family as the Gypsy moth, 
