Studies of the Development of Fidia viticida Walsh. 169 



both Mr. Ashmead and U. S. Entomologist Mr. L. O. Howard, 

 owing to its belonging to a group supposed to be parasitic on 

 Diptera exclusively, I give full details of the rearing of the 

 specimens from which the original description was 'drawn. 

 The cluster of eggs were given me by Prof. Hobbs, of the 

 Western Reserve Medical College, who found them on a vine, 

 located practically as shown in Fig. 4, Plate IX, and removed 

 them therefrom in a body, they remaining attached to each 

 other, and placed them in a watch glass in his laboratory. 

 On looking at them some days later the pupa could be dis- 

 tinguished within the shell, both the eyes and ocelli showing 

 very clearly. This was on July 20, and during the following 

 four days I watched them carefully, at the end of which time 

 I distinctly saw one move about within the shell of the egg, 

 and later make its way forth. Another individual was 

 removed from the shell, it having perished prior to hatching. 

 No one saw these eggs deposited by the parent beetle, but 

 there was no difference either in form or color from those 

 from which Fidia larva emerged, and the only possible way 

 that an error could be accounted for would be to suppose that 

 a minute fly, whose eggs exactly counterfeited those of Fidia, 

 had oviposited among the eggs of the latter, and the Fidiobia 

 had detected them and placed her own ova in them. This 

 appears to me to be an improbability, to say the least. With 

 Brachysticha fidia, Ashmead, though I did not witness the 

 deposition of the eggs by the beetle, I did observe the para- 

 site oviposit in them, on August 4. On the 14th the pupa was 

 well defined within the shells, and on the 18th this stage had 

 advanced so that the eyes were clearly visible, being about 

 as were the Fidiobia when I first saw them. The adults 

 emerged on the twenty-first day after eggs were deposited. 



