170 PARASITES OF GIPSY AND BROWN-TAIL MOTHS. 
As soon as females of Anastatus were secured, some of these eggs 
were removed from storage and found to be dead, with the contents 
partially decomposed. Nevertheless an attempt was made to use 
them, and the parasites were given their choice between them and 
others which contained embryonic caterpillars. 
A few days after their emergence the females began to betray an 
interest in both sorts of eggs, and were several times observed in the 
act of oviposition or attempted oviposition. Apparently this was 
successfully accomplished, but without further results, for no second 
generation resulted. The experiment served one purpose, however, . 
in indicating beyond reasonable doubt that the insect actually was a 
parasite upon the eggs of the gipsy moth, and not upon any chance 
form of insect life accidentally included. 
—~ 
Sess 
wy p : o AR 
Fic. 12.—A nastatus bifasciatus: Adult female. Greatly enlarged. (From Howard.) 
The exposure of the imported eggs to warmth for the purpose of 
hastening the emergence of any parasites which they chanced to con- 
1 How great is the likelihood of error when parasites are reared from unbroken egg masses has several 
times been demonstrated in the course of the investigations and rearing work at the laboratory. Upon 
several occasions small Lepidoptera have been reared from egg masses, and more than once their para- 
sitized pupee have been found. Eggs of other species of insects, and occasionally parasitized scale insects, 
have also been found attached to bits of bark to which egg masses were attached. Very frequently cocoons 
of A panteles fulvipes are found, wholly or partially covered by the egg mass, and from them several species 
of hibernating secondaries have been reared. There is a record of a minute eulophid, allied to Entedon, 
having issued from a small lot of eggs which had been separated from nearly every trace of foreign matter. 
It was thought then and is still believed that these came from the eggs themselves, and that they were 
actually parasitic upon either Anastatus or Schedius, but when the material from which they issued was 
examined two or three cocoons of A panteles fulvipes were found mingled with it, and what might otherwise 
have been a clear record was spoiled. 
There is in Japan a limacodid moth—Parasa sinica Moore (hilarula Staud), as determined by Dr. H. G. 
Dyar—which appears habitually to seek out the gipsy-moth egg masses as a site for pupation. Thelarva 
buries itself in the mass before spinning its cocoon, and from outward appearances its presence is hardly 
noticeable. More than 25 of these moths have been reared under these circumstances from imported egg 
masses, or their cocoons have been found and destroyed. 
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