92 ON SOME LEPIDOPTEEOUS LAEV^. 



if smaller and weaker. On one occasion I placed four of 

 these larvae in a jam-pot together with their food, but in 

 the course of a few days one only remained — the tragedy 

 was manifest ! 



Far different to this rapacious creature is the beautiful 

 larva of our local Hook-tip {Drepana sicula), of which we 

 Bristol entomologists are proud to have the monopoly, as 

 far as Great Britain is concerned, and a few words on this 

 species may therefore be of interest. We will suppose that 

 we have been sufficiently fortunate to obtain a female speci- 

 men of the moth from its only locality, Leigh Woods. We 

 have placed her in a glass cylinder with some lime leaves, 

 and she has laid a few oval cream-coloured eggs, carefully 

 affixing them singly to the very edge of the leaf, just in the 

 bottom points of the serrations. The eggs have in the 

 course of forty-eight hours taken on their upper surface a 

 beautiful red bloom, so that they resemble little white-heart 

 cherries. Then after a few days they turn dark-red all over, 

 and soon the tiny caterpillar emerges from its shell, a per- 

 fect hook -tip in all its characters, with head and tail raised 

 as it crawls, and of a dark red brown in colour. 



Now, the greatest difficulty in rearing this larva begins 

 at once — that is, to persuade it to settle down to its food. 

 It is restless, and wanders about, and will die if not looked 

 after most patiently, picked up with a camel's-hair brush, 

 and put down on a special part of the leaf. And I lost 

 many larvae before I found where this particular place was 

 situated. I discovered that it preferred to begin to feed 

 either just at the tip or on one of the curves by the side of 

 the leaf-stalk. At first it only eats the upper surface, but 

 after the first skin-change begins to riibble through, cutting 

 a long narrow sinus into the leaf. It always lies on the 

 upper surface, and after once taking to its food, is one of 



