Ill 
now being issued in connection with the “Challenger ’ 
expedition. 
“On Pendant Nests of a Gregarious Moth from Vene- 
zuela,” by Mr. John Plant, F.G.S. 
Entomologists have long been familiar with insects which 
are social or gregarious either in the larva, pupa, or perfect 
stages of their metamorphoses, and it appears from the 
results of many recent careful investigations that although 
a social instinct has been found more or less developed in 
insects belonging to every order, yet it is in the Hymen- 
optera that we find the highest instincts for forming and 
living in communities and society. “ The bees and the ants 
are a wise and perfect people” is an adage as old as historic 
time. 
The lepidoptera are not known to include any species 
which live in entire communal life in every stage; the 
caterpillars of some species will associate for feeding, such 
as Clisiocampa neustria, Eriogaster lanestris, and others, 
which live in a tent-like nest when in the stage of larva, 
and enlarge it as necessity compels. The common silk moth, 
Bombyx mori, is gregarious as a larva, and can be trained to 
group their cocoons in bundles of twigs ; but these species 
form no communities when in the perfect stage, they simply 
pair off and are entirely independent of each other. Other 
species there are which will be independent when in their 
larval stage, yet will instinctively band together to con- 
struct a common nest, pouch, or tent, in which they grega- 
riously undergo their transformation into the stage of pupse, 
again dispersing in pairs when they pass into perfect insects. 
Others there are which are not known to live gregariously 
either as larvae or pupae, which are yet observed flying in 
extraordinary swarms as perfect butterflies and moths— so 
that whilst communistic habits are displayed in one or two 
