118 REPORT 4, UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSSON. 
camp near Enterprise, Fla., I was greatly annoyed by the appearance of 
these flies within the paper boxes where I kept the insects collected by 
me. These insects were killed by leaving them in the cyanide bottle for 
not less than 12 hours. I never noticed any Phoras in perfectly tight 
boxes, and they infested only such not perfectly tight boxes as con- 
tained large insects, especially Orthoptera, which in the moist air of a 
Florida rainy season are very difficult to dry and which were in a state 
of slight decomposition. The larvae of these flies either fed externally 
upon the softer parts of the dead insects, or internally, and the puparia 
were either formed on the outside of the insects or simply fastened to 
any part of the box. On my second trip to Florida I had similar ex- 
perience, though 1 was better prepared for the attacks of Phora, a lib- 
eral and frequent use of carbolic acid doing good service in keeping the 
flies out. Being thus familar, or at least believing myself familiar, with 
the habits of this Phora, I was not astonished to see it around my 
breeding jars and pill boxes with insects during my stay in Columbus, 
Tex., during the summer of 1879, and considered it as a matter of course 
to see the flies emerging from the jars where I kept chrysalides of Aletia, 
a portion of which I knew to be rotten. It never occurred to me then 
that this Phora would ever be considered as a parasite of Aletia. Af- 
ter Professor Comstock had declared it as such, 1 paid more attention 
to the insect during my stay in- Selina. A number of sound Aletia 
chrysalides were crushed and put in ajar which was partly open. Sev- 
eral Phoras were seen in the jar 24 hours afterwards, and four days 
later the rotting mass was alive with the fly larvae. Another lot of 
sound chrysalides was crushed outdoors in their webs, but only two of 
them were found afterwards to be infested with Phora, the others were 
either eaten out by the ants or simply dried up without attracting any- 
thing. Larvae of Phora aletice were not unfrequently found in the last 
week of August and the first week of September in chrysalides of Aletia 
which hung down from the naked stems and leaf-ribs, the worms hav- 
ing previously utterly defoliated the plants. Many hundreds of these 
chrysalids which are thus unprotected from the rays of the sun or 
from the rain were examined by me during the time just mentioned, and 
by far the greatest part of them — at least three-fourths of the whole 
number — proved to be rotten, the contents being a light brown, badly 
smelling fluid, ifo parasitic larvae could be discovered within, and the 
chrysalides showed no outward signs whatever of having been attacked 
by any insect. The remaining one-fourth of these chrysalides were either 
in healthy condition, or killed by some enemy (mostly by ants and Po- 
disus), or infested with parasites [ChdUns ovata and Tachina), or con- 
tained Sarcophaga and Phora larvae. I have to emphasize the met 
that the chrysalides containing Phora larvae contained the same rotten 
fluid of fche same disgusting smell as the majority of the chrysalids 
mentioned above. From 150 specimens of such chrysalides put in a 
large glass jar I obtained only 5 or 6 moths, a number of the above- 
