NOTES ON IIEMKROPIIILA AURUl'TAUrA. 121 



Notes on Hemcrophila abruptaria. 



By W. G. TEARCE. 



On the cvonin^t? of ^lay 14th, 1S95, a lad in my employ captured, 

 outsider the front of my house, and prohahly attracted hy the li,t,dit, a 

 nia<,niiiicent dark female aberration of I lotwrdifliila ahrniitavia. Thou,i,di 

 enclosed in his hands, it was then uninjured, but whilst I hurried into 

 the room for a chip box, the moth escaped, and Hew three times 

 through a gas flame, and was picked up scorched and apparently 

 lifeless. I tried to revive her with sweetened water, and after about 

 twenty minutes the insect showed faint signs of life, when she was en- 

 closed in a chip box and left for the night. Next morning the moth was 

 dead, but had deposited 18 eggs before dying. The eggs hatched in 

 about a fortnight, and the larvas were carefully tended in a pot on a 

 mantel-shelf. All went well for a couple of weeks, when they were 

 knocked into the fireplace, 9 only being recovered. Of these, two 

 subsequently died, and seven pupated, the latter producing three 

 dark aberrations, and four normal light forms, in April and May, 181}(). 



The probability of the first capture having come from my own 

 garden at once occurred to me, and I couuncnced a nightly search of 

 the lilac bushes there. Several ordinary forms occurred, but on May 

 2;->rd, 1895 (nine days after the first capture), I found a dark ^ in cop. 

 with an ordinary $ . From this pairing I obtained a batch of eggs, 

 which hatched in due course, and finally produced 30 to 10 imagines 

 in the spring of 1896 ; the first dark specimen, a ? , emerged on April 

 20th, 189G. This female was paired with a small dark male (one of 

 the three mentioned above as coming from the captured female). 

 Fertile eggs were obtained, but the resulting larva3 were mixed with 

 those obtained from other pairings, and their identity was lost. Many 

 of these mixed larvae fed up more rapidly, and produced a partial 

 second brood, the imagines appearing in August, 1896. These were 

 all smaller than the spring form. Some of these were again paired, 

 though it seemed rather difficult to induce them to do so. Eggs 

 resulted, some larvns fed up rapidly, but the majority seemed to hang 

 about whilst quite small. When the lilac was bare I gave them privet, 

 which they ate readily for a time, and late in December, 1896, some 

 tried to spin up, only two, however, being successful in doing so. The 

 remainder that were full-fed died, whilst the smaller ones nibbled a 

 little now and again, until the end of January, 1897, when most of 

 them died. Half a dozen produced pupfc, imagines from which 

 emerged in April and May, 1897, the last one to emerge doing so on 

 May 26th, and being the only dark aberration obtained from the 

 hybernating larvio. The hybernation of a species in the larval stage 

 that normally passes the winter in the pupal stage is very interesting. 



Larvte of //. abruptaria were remarkably abundant in the autunni 

 of 1895. Of these, I collected a large number, feeding them up out- 

 of-doors in a large breeding cage. Several of these produced dark 

 specimens in the spring of 1896. I also captured several dark 

 aberrations in my garden in May, 1896, and three, on different dates, 

 in the house, where two had apparently emerged since I found the 

 empty cocoons under a shelf. Since the autumn of 1895, larvae have 

 been very scarce in my garden. I have an idea that the abundance of 

 earwigs {Furfuida aricularc), in 1895 and 1896, had much to do with 



