Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/474

442 formed? Has the imago or the pupa the power of secreting some fluid that decomposes the wall of the seed; but if so, how is it that the aperture is so perfectly true in its circular form? This aperture is never visible until the imago or pupa has emerged. The seeds remain externally intact up to that time. It occurred to me that the larva, before going into the pupa state, might possibly prepare an exit for the imago by eating partly through the wall, but not so far as to break through altogether. With a view to ascertain this, I have just opened a seed, and find a perfect pupa, and no sign of the interior of the walls having been eaten away, as I conjectured above; and besides, if such preparatory boring, as I conjectured, had occurred, this would have involved intelligence on the part of the larva, which one can hardly suppose. The subject, I think, is an interesting one, and I hope that some of your entomological readers will throw some light upon it.— (St. Alban's Court, near Wingham, Kent).

[See 'Entomologist,' 1895, 1896, and 1897, and especially a paper by Dr. Sharp "On Jumping Cocoons from South Africa," Entom. November, 1896.— ]