214 
Psyche 
[October- December 
seen running on the trees though I did not see any attacks by 
them on the caterpillars (as observed in previous years); about 
the end of June the caterpillars were beginning to bunch up and I 
noticed at once Calosoma larvae working on them. These nearly 
always operated on some bunch of caret pi liars on or near the 
trunk. The larvae were very voracious, eating constantly and 
increasing rapidly in size, their preference, if any, seemed to be 
caterpillars hunched up ready to become pupae, because then they 
are perfectly helpless, almost torpid, still they constantly attacked 
the caterpillars and sucked out the pup®. One small larva 
fastened into the rear of a full grown 9 caterpillar, the latter 
threshed about, but the larva with his legs bent up held on 
tght and finally the caterpillar, still threshing, began to crawl 
rapidly up the tree, then juice began to drop from the body of 
the larva. He had got his head into the caterpillar, the latter 
stopped and the liquid ran down the larva. Next morning the 
caterpillar was a dry skin. 
Various diptera attended the caterpillar bunches; only one, 
however, was actually observed to attack. This was a grayish fly 
somewhat larger than the domestic, and noticeably grayish on the 
upper side. The fly hovered over the caterpillars, lit on one and 
deposited a small white object, which I could see wiggle. Call- 
ing my man, who happened to be near by, we saw this little 
wiggler disappear into the body of the caterpillar at about his 
anterior third. This caterpillar I boxed to get the fly, but the 
caterpillar died of wilt. In addition to the insect enemies, the 
caterpillars were attacked by some form of “wilt” disease, which 
developed tremendously when they began to bunch up. For 
several days I had under observation one particular bunch of 
about seventy-five caterpillars, mostly large females. The disease 
would first show in a distending of parts of the body which gra- 
dually became semi-shinv, then the vitality would seem to go 
out of the caterpillar, his entire viscera would become putrid, 
and breaking open drop out, leaving the remains hanging. This 
bunch of seventy-five was kept at about the same size for some 
days by fresh additions. Not one spun a web and only once 
was a Calosoma observed. They all died of disease. Just after 
