76 
Psyche 
[June 
moist or dry, loosely packed earth with piles of dead grass 
for cover. The larvae were exceedingly active, humping 
frantically over the soil and exploring every part of the 
chamber. Some burrowed between or under loose, moist 
clods, but most of them settled under the grass on the 
moist surface. Within one to six hours all had become 
shortened and dark brown ; puparia were formed a few 
hours later. One large specimen emerged from its host and 
formed a puparium within one hour. 
As to the effects of the parasitism on the host, most of 
the cone-heads were active, singing and feeding nightly, 
until a day or two before the larvae emerged. A few hours 
before the exodus they became feeble and sluggish; two 
or three hours after even one or two larvae had emerged, 
the host was dead. Post-mortem examination showed a 
depletion of the fat body roughly proportionate to the 
number of parasites, but little apparent damage to the 
major organ systems. From these facts it is significant that 
larval survival is narrowly limited to those individuals 
within a particular host which reach maturity almost 
simultaneously. Two larvae emerged from one host within 
two hours of each other and pupated, while six other larvae, 
including one of the first instar, died inside the moribund 
host a few hours later. The total complement of three larvae 
escaped from another host and pupated successfully. This 
situation, 'involving larvae in staggered developmental 
stages within one host, is suggestive of a rather extended 
period of larviposition and a considerable endurance in 
the host-seeking first instar larvae. It might be added here 
that two heavily parasitized hosts also contained one and 
two specimens of a nematomorph, Gordius sp., coiled in 
their abdominal cavities. Further, three of the 1952 cone- 
heads each contained one nearly mature larva which Mr. 
Sabrosky has suggested as possibly Beskia aelops. 
A female puparium is shown in figs. 7 and 8. Four male 
puparia vary from approximately 5.5 x 2.9 to 6.2 x 3.4 mm, 
and those of two females from 5.3 x 3.1 to 8.1 x 4.1 mm. 
The surface is finely wrinkled and the larval segmentation 
is fairly prominent. The line of dehiscence of the puparial 
cap, as well as a secondary fracture, is dotted in the figure. 
