Ray Society Volume 77 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 Excerpt: ... batch of eggs of this small species, laid loosely by the parent moth, which he had captured in the Oil-Cake Company's warehouse a short time before. The eggs began to hatch on the 8th of September, and continued to do so at intervals for two or three days, and the little larvae were confined with some pieces of the pod of the "locust-bean " of commerce, which Mr. Webb had also kindly provided for them, and in the course of a week they could be seen to have grown, and by the end of the month very much more grown, and by the middle of December some of them were as long as 6 mm. During the winter months I saw but little of them, when from time to time I found it needful to replenish their food, in consequence of the large accumulation of frass at the bottom of their residence (resembling coffee-grounds), they having denuded the beans by devouring the substance of the pod; and, moreover, they had already made, and continued to make, any observations on my part very difficult, and of their moulting impracticable, by completely obscuring their surroundings with a dense spinning of whitish-grey silk; and they had lined with silk the little tunnels excavated amongst the refuse. VOL. ix. 14 By the beginning of April, 1882, they, however, began again to show themselves and were grown considerably, and yet required a further supply of their food, as by this time a prodigious quantity of frass had been made. The first specimen of the perfect insect was bred on the last day of April; others followed on the 12th of May, others again on the 1st and 4th of June, and the last on the 14th of July. The egg of Ephestia passulella is elliptical in shape, with bluntly rounded ends, and finely pitted surface, whitish at first and soon of a delicate straw-yellow; two da...