96 THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 
The females of this family are wingless creatures, resemb- 
ling fat ants. During the pairing season they are picked up 
and carried about by the winged males. After being dropped 
by the males they burrow into the ground and lay their eggs on 
curl grubs, ete., in the ground. In this respect it is difficult to 
estimate their worth. 
LIFE CYCLE. OF PSYCHOPSIS MIMICA. 
By L. Gauuarp. 
On January 28th, 1921,- 1 received from Miss Brown, 
Albury, one of our members, a fine adult specimen of Psychopsis 
mimica (Aust. Nat., y., p. 64). This specimen was forwarded 
by post, and en route it laid a number of eges in the box. Dur- 
ing the first week in February nine of these hatched, and I re- 
solved, if possible, to rear them. I fed them on small Lepidop- 
tera larvae, and was able to carry three of them on till November. 
Two of them then died, but the remaining one fed on cheer- 
fully until December, when it appeared to be full fed and ready 
to spin up, and each day I expected to see it spinning its co- 
coon, but December and January passed without any change, 
and I felt satisfied I had to settle down to a twelve months 
wait. I continued to feed it till winter set in, and it entered its 
state of quiesence. When the spring came round it revived, and 
began to feed freely again, and, finally, on October 15, 1922, it 
spun up in a lovely white silken cocoon. Here it lay till De- 
cember 16, 1922, when it emerged a beautiful adult specimen. 
The time, therefore, from the laying of the egg to the emergence 
of the adult, was one year, ten months, and twelve days. The 
most important part of this from a field Naturalist’s point of 
view 1s, that Miss Brown, by her humble effort, enabled me to 
obtain the complete life cycle of such an important insect, and 
(through the Journal) I would like to extend to her my hearty 
thanks, with the hope that it may inspire other members t. 
follow her example. 
Psychopsis elegans.—This is the same insect—as was writ- 
ten up by me before (Aust. Nat., vol. ii, p. 29) as Psychopsis 
newmant, but Dr. Tillyard has since altered the name to P. 
elegans. These specimens were bred in December, 1922, from ~ 
larvae taken at Kenthurst. 
Two specimens of P. gallardi we secured on the rocks at 
Kenthurst on January 14, 1923, and at the same place and date 
Spermophorella disseminata. 
