The insect remains in this condition during the winter months. About September the male pupa works its way down to the lower end of the case, forces open the old aperture there situated, and projects the head and thorax, the pupa being secured from falling by the spines on its posterior segments, which retain a firm hold in the silk. Its anterior portion then breaks open, and the moth makes its escape, clinging to the outside of its old habitation, and drying its wings.
The perfect insect must be about from September till December, but I have never then observed it. The only specimen I have seen was noticed flying very rapidly in the street in Wellington, in July. I was at first unable to tell what species it was, as it had a most unusual appearance on the wing, but its subsequent near approach enabled me to ascertain for certain that it was a specimen of this insect. In captivity I have also noticed the extreme activity of the male when first emerged. Indeed this moth is so vivacious, that it often happens, owing to the emergence usually taking place very early in the morning, that specimens are more or less injured by their efforts to escape, before they are discovered in the breeding cage. This restless energy of the male is no doubt essential to the insect's well-being, as the females, hidden away in their cases and incapable of any movement, must of necessity be very hard to discover. The power of locomotion lost in the one sex is thus doubled in the other. Considering the protection afforded this insect by the case, which it inhabits during its preparatory stages, its enormous mortality from the attacks of a parasitic dipteron (Eurigaster marginatus) is very remarkable. In this connection the following analysis of 38 cases, gathered at random, may be of interest:—
26 had parasites.
08 were dead.
02 contained eggs.
02 contained living pupæ, 1 male and 1 female respectively.
Amongst some of these parasites I once obtained a specimen, which was in its turn infested by a secondary or hyper-parasite, belonging to the genus Pteromalus, in the order Hymenoptera. Eighteen of these minute insects emerged from a single pupa of E. marginatus. The method by which the Pteromalus introduces its eggs into the dipterous larva, which is in its turn enclosed in a caterpillar, is not at present known to entomologists; but it seems probable that the eggs of the hyper-parasite are either deposited in the eggs of the dipterous insect, or else on the very young larvæ, before they penetrate the skin of the caterpillar.[[66]]
Genus 2.—OROPHORA, Fereday.
"Ocelli present. Antennæ ⅔, in male moderately bi-pectinated throughout. Labial palpi rudimentary, hairy. Abdomen densely hairy. Fore-wings with veins 4 and 5 short-stalked, 7 and 8 out of 9. Hind-wings with veins 4 and 5 stalked, parting-vein well defined, 8 connected by bar with cell beyond middle, and additional vein (9) rising out of 8 before bar."
We have one species.