March, '09! ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 127 



Another Season with Catocalae. 

 By R. R. ROWLEY. 



During January and February I received small lots of eggs 

 of Catocala nupta, electa, elocata and fra.rini from J. McDun- 

 nough, of Berlin, Germany, and C. Leonhard, of Kearney, New 

 Jersey. 



Not aware that the weather of early March was warm enough 

 to affect these eggs, I lost much of this European stuff before 

 the middle of the month, the larvae dying before I knew of their 

 hatching. The few remaining eggs of electa, nupta and elocata, 

 which I supposed infertile, hatched about the last of the month 

 before there were any leaves on which to feed them. Furnish- 

 ing the young crawlers (more properly "gallopers," for young 

 Catocala larvae are the most energetic insects I ever had any- 

 thing to do with), split buds until I could get leaves from slips 

 of willow and poplar placed in tumblers of water in a warm 

 room of the house. 



The fra.rini eggs hatched later and did well from the begin- 

 ning, though their development was slow. The growth of the 

 larva of this latter species must be as strong in captivity as in 

 its wild state since the caterpillar is the largest of the "Cato' 

 worms" and the imago much larger than any of our American 

 species of the genus. The handsomest larva of these species 

 is that of electa, a real beauty. 



A quill of eggs labeled sponsa gave larvae that refused oak 

 and took to poplar after most of them had died. A single imago 

 told the story. It was nupta. 



The growth of these European caterpillars was really exas- 

 peratingly slow, but most interesting in a developmental way. 

 All of them fed on the food plants of cara, amatrix and parta, 

 and the larvae all bear no little resemblance to the American 

 species, all having a cross elliptical elevation or dorsal hump 

 over the fifth abdominal segment and the latero-ventral row of 

 short setae. 



After the first moult, the larvae of C. fra.rini are very light 

 in color and so contine to the end of the larval stage. 



I am almost tempted to minutely describe these larvae from 



