NOTES. 
125 
quantity of fine white waxy powder with which the pupa is thickly 
covered.” 
In their 44 Notes on the Larvae and Pupae of some of the Butter¬ 
flies of the Bombay Presidency ” (Journ. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., 
Vol. V., 1890, p. 370), J. Davidson and E. H. Aitken found the 
same species on the coconut palm. Their account differs in some 
details from that of De Niceville. According to them, “ the larva 
forms a tube-cell by joining the edges of a leaf, and never leaves it. 
The pupa is formed in the same shelter, which is first lined with 
silk and closed at the ends.” 
It seems clear that the above-named authors found nothing very 
much out of the common in the larval habits of Suastus gremius ; 
and it is probable that they reared the larvse in boxes on detached 
pieces of leaves, not observing them when left to themselves in the 
open ; while Davidson and Aitken only concerned themselves with 
the latest stages. 
The following notes upon the leaf-cutting caterpillar of S. gremius 
were collected on the verandah of my bungalow in Colombo, from 
July to September, 1908. For some time previously the eggs, 
larvse, and pupae of the clicker, Elymnias fraterna , had been kept 
under observation on pot-palms. This butterfly, when alighting 
upon the sprays of the fan-shaped leaves in search of a likely spot 
upon which to deposit a solitary egg, has the peculiarity of emitting 
a loud clicking sound, like that of certain grasshoppers (Tryxalidce). 
The caterpillars were prevented from becoming a pest by the common 
babblers, who often broke the chain of observation. 
On July 25 a new caterpillar appeared upon the same palms, 
not feeding openly as does the larva of Elymnias , but making a 
shelter for itself by folding over a portion of leaf and fastening it 
down with a web. In this way it lives, coming out half-way to eat. 
As it grows it makes larger shelters, sometimes on the same spray, 
sometimes on a different one. A single caterpillar will construct 
six successive shelters, the last one becoming the puparium. 
When the young caterpillar has consumed the leaf-blade within 
reach of its shelter, leaving the latter with the caterpillar still inside 
suspended from the leaf by the midrib alone, it then forsakes its 
cover, crawls along the pendulous midrib to the main leaf, and, on 
reaching the latter, it turns round deliberately and bites through 
the midrib at the point where it joins the body of the leaf, whereupon 
the old shelter, or, as Davidson and Aitken call it, the tube-cell, falls 
to the ground. 
The caterpillar next sets about testing the upper surface of the 
leaf, moving its head from side to side, and laying down a mat of 
webbing. It then commences the construction of a new house, 
biting through the leaf at a suitable distance from the apical end 
of the leaf-spray. Each biological moment is sharply expressed, 
the folding of the leaf-cover, the subsequent feeding and growth, 
