Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 11.djvu/361

Rh times, either to an animal or to a plant. Much, however, of its surpassing beauty quickly faded after death, which I attributed to the fumes of the sulphur I had used in killing it, not having any chloroform at hand, and leaving home on that very day by train to visit the country schools.

The pupa-case (after the moth had emerged) is nearly cylindrical, very obtuse at the head, and tapering regularly downwards from end of folded wings at 4th segment, and pointed conical at the tail; length, 1″ 3‴, and diameter in thickest part 6‴; suspended slightly by tail; well-marked in front with folds of wings and antennæ, eyes and head of imago, and very strongly with 7-ringed segments, each having two long spiracle marks, one on each side. Colour dark red (garnet), with a blueish or violet bloom (dust), but smooth and shining on its prominent parts.

Cocoon very small, white and coarse, almost woolly; just sufficient to hold the edges of the leaf down to paper, where, however, it was strongly fastened; fæcal pellets emitted after enclosure.

The imago had made its exit by a small round hole at the top of pupacase, back of the head, the case having also slightly given way down the costal marking of the wungs on each side.

—Dr. Dieffenbach saw the moth I had raised from the larvæ referred to (in the note, p 301), at my house in the Bay of Islands, where he was a frequent visitor during his stay there in the summer of 1840–1841; and from me the doctor obtained not a few specimens and much information (like many other visitors of that early period), which, however, he never acknowledged.

As it may be of some little interest I will just quote what I then wrote about that larva and imago, in a letter to Sir W. Hooker, dated "July, 1841," and published by him in the London Journal of Botany (1842), vol. I., pp. 304, 305.

"In a phial you will find specimens of what I believe to be the true larvæ of Sphæria robertsii. These larvae are abundant in their season on the foliage of Batatas edulis (?), the kumara of the New Zealanders; to the great distress of the natives, who cultivate this root as a main article of their food, and whose occupation, at such times, is to collect and destroy them, which they do in great numbers. They vary a little in colour, as may be observed in the specimens sent. The New Zealanders call them Hotete and Anuhe (the same names which they apply to the Sphæria robertsii itself), and always speak of them as identical with that Fungus. The common belief is, that both (those living on the kumara and those which bear the Fungi) alike descend from the clouds! this opinion doubtless arising from their sudden appearance and countless numbers.