826 
HEPIALIDAE. By R. Pfitzner f and M. Gaede. 
organs by the hair being spread out. Some Hepialidae have also an easily noticeable scent, similar to the 
Cossidae ; Hepialus hecta, for instance, is said to have an odour of straw-berries or pine-apple. 
Whether this odour is also intended as a protection against certain enemies, has not been decided, but 
it is rather improbable, and it seems that the Hepialidae are merely protected by their adaptation to the 
surroundings; according to the observations hitherto possible, they are greedily taken by all kinds of insecti- 
vora. Besides, the larva has to undergo such an immense number of dangers during its long subterranean 
or endophagous life that only very few of them survive until they have reached the stage of the perfect insect. 
The extermination is therefore opposed by an extraordinary fertility. The abdomen of a female specimen 
of Trictena labyrinthica (75 a) proved to contain 15 000 eggs after having deposited already 29 100 eggs 
(B. Tindale), so that we might not wonder at discovering about 50 000 eggs in a sound §. As to the de¬ 
position of the eggs, the swarming $ simply drops them when flying across grassy plots or such places where 
the very common roots of Monocotyledons, of grasses, reeds, herbs etc. sprout forth. A number of larger 
species are supposed to keep not only to the roots, but to leave their hiding-places in the soil at night and 
to feed overground. Others again live in wood, and their imagines, which often exhibit a wonderful green 
and pink colour, cover the red with the green when at rest; in this way they are so well adapted to the 
leaves of Eucalyptus that they are almost undiscover able. Thus they can be captured by hardly any 
other means than by breeding them from trunks showing their bore-holes, or when they come flyiug to 
lamps the light of which seems to attract all the Hepialidae. In Australia, numerous specimens of rare species 
were captured on the light-houses. 
Regarding the jugum, which name is due to the opinion that it represents a leashing of the fore wings 
and hindwings, we refer the readers to the statements already made in Vol. II. This opinion seems to be 
contrasted by the recent, very thorough investigations of Philpott, since the imago, when at rest, takes 
up a dorsal position; besides, the swarming <$ of the large species makes the impression that the fore¬ 
wings and hindwings move rather independently from each other while the insect is flying. 
In New Zealand, where the enemies of the Hepialidae from the animal kingdom are not so nume¬ 
rous as in Australia and South Africa, owing to the absence of nearly all the reptiles and all the insecti¬ 
vorous mammals, the Hepialidae meet with an extremely dangerous enemy, a fungus: Cordyceps robertii. The 
infected larva, the whole body of which is covered with the mycelium, after its death exhibits the fungal 
stroma growing forth behind the head in the shape of a stalk up to 10 cm long and about as thick as 
a knitting-needle, on which a long-extended pile of utricles is errected. All these larvae covered with fungi 
were formerly taken to be those of Charagia virescens DM. (74 a), but it seems that also the larvae of Porina 
are particularly attacked. 
The larvae of nearly all the Hepialidae are oblong, either bare or studded with single short bristles, 
of the bone-white colour of the maggots and subterranean larvae, but with a honey-brown head and neck- 
shield and very strong teeth. They grow slowly, and many never leave their subterranean, tunnel-like habi¬ 
tations. Some of the gigantic Australian species, at the time of pupation, drive these dwelling-channels verti¬ 
cally upwards, so that the ascending branch extends from a depth of half a meter to close below the surface 
of the earth. The pupa is likewiese uncommonly long, cylindrical, and the abdominal segments are broader 
than they are long, as in the larva. The cases of the legs and wings are only loosely attached and, com¬ 
pared with the extremely long abdominal part, so very short that those of the female pupa do not even 
reach the centre of the pupa. The pupa of the gigantic Abantiades ascends the channel only just before the 
emergence, by means of the rows of spines on the abdomen, until half of its body projects from the soil. 
The imagines often fly to the camp-fires of the Australian natives, drop into the flames and are roasted, 
whereupon the negroes fetch them out of the fire and immediately eat them. The harm done by the Hepialid 
larvae boring their channels into the timber is not so great as that of the Cossidae, because a great many 
of them bore more in the roots than in the valuable trunk-wood. 
Hepialidae. 
By R. Pfitzner f and M. Gaede. 
It is a most difficult task to supply a tolerably exhaustive description of the Indo-Australian Hepia- 
lidae as well as of the exotic Hepialidae on the whole. Many species are extremely rare, unique specimens in 
the collections, and are not sent away. One may live in the Hepialid country of Australia for decades without 
ever seeing the better species in nature. Collecting is very difficult, since most of the Hepialidae live in 
swampy districts or in the mountains. The collector will rarely make up his mind to collect in tropical marshes 
in the evening. The species of Charagia are obtained by breeding them; for this purpose the tree inhabited 
