Insect miscellanies / [Anon].

Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insect miscellanies / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with a sort of tremulous quivering not very percep- tible unless closely inspected. It might be that there were no males inthe vicinity, though the insect is by no means rare around Lee ; at all events, she re-_ mained without a mate for about three weeks, as | the eggs which she at length laid proved to be in- fertile, and she died soon after. In, the instance of a much rarer insect, the clear under-wing (gerva asiliformis, Srppuuns), having discovered a brood in the trunk of a poplar tree, we were desirous of securing all that issued from it, and having caught a female, we placed her in a box covered with gauze at the root.of the tree,— the. notion of surrounding “the tree itself with gauze not having occurred to us_ at the moment. As this moth is one of the day- fliers, we expected to make sure of all the males in the neighbourhood ; but, to our no small disappoint- ment, not one approached the box, though we after- wards inclosed in it another female. ‘This was the more remarkable, that, from the protrusion of the pupa cases from the tree, there was evidently not only one or two, but a considerable number evolved after the box had been placed there. In 1828, having discovered a beautiful male crane-fly (Ctenophorts pectinicornis, Mricen), apparently just disclosed from the pupa, we carefully examined the old willow stump upon which it rested, expecting to find more of the same brood. Next day we accordingly observed a female, and imagining it to be one of the rare species (Ct. ornata or Ct. flaveolata), we placed her in a gauze-covered box ; but no male approached for five days, when a large hunting-spider found means to in- troduce himself into the box, and make a meal of her. * There is one extraordinary fact connected with this subject, which is worthy of being prominently stated, namely, — that after insects pair, and the females de- IR, VOL, XII itd