Mr. Bairstow thus notes the method of operation of 
the grub:—Travelling up and down a branch, he at last 
approached a good fat specimen of Dorthesia , and began 
dragging with his mandibles pieces of the woolly nidus, 
which he carefully arranged, and throwing his head back¬ 
ward steadily deposited the fragments on his body until 
it was quite covered. This I found was afterwards 
utilised in metamorphosis for a domicile to protect it in 
chrysalis state, and being coated inside with some gummy 
secretion, made a hard exterior and capital fortress; but 
in wrenching away the white nest from the female bug, 
he was demolishing the only protection for the eggs and 
young buglets sheltered within. Having at last puiled 
away enough to expose the residents, he seized on them 
one by one, and, after sucking all vitality out, flung away 
the empty skin. . , . 
For further observation ten or twelve of these Aphis 
Lions” were placed with six gravid female “ bugs,” one 
of which was opened by a cut across the white waxy egg- 
nest, thus exposing the eggs and young within, which were 
reckoned by Mr. Bairstow as amounting to as many as 
five hundred, if all hatched. At the end of the first day 
the whole collection in the opened female had been 
destroyed by the voracious little Aphis Lions; they then 
attacked the other female bugs, and at the end of five 
davs scarcely a bugling survived. 
The observer further remarks that he has noticed. 
il scores of times ” that well-developed females which he 
saw on a branch on one afternoon would next morning 
show only as broken egg-bags, empty and torn to shreds, 
and as they could not have all hatched and got away, it 
appeared plain there was something at work “ struggling 
to assist in keeping a proper balance, and this, after 
search was found in the shape of a Hemerobius grub, a 
small larva with big jaws, demolishing. Dorthesia in scores.” 
Mr. Bairstow remarks that the voracious larva is much 
hl-ick also longitudinal markings or lamina reaching from near base of 
mandibles to second pair of tubercles, black and conspicuous. Jaws 
about one-sixth length of body; palpi and antennae prominent.—S. D. B. 
