6 



usually feed slowly, the moths from them coming out with the August 

 emergence. It is not a difficult species to rear from the egg, the 

 larva feeding naturally on a large number of small plants, such as 

 cinquefoil [Potentilla reptauii), yarrow {Aclnllea tiiillefnlia), and so 

 forth, while in confinement it takes readily to knotgrass {Polijf/ouinii 

 aricidare), and for the hibernating larva? a useful adjunct to the 

 dietary is a common little hawkweed-like plant, Crepis rirena 

 (See " Proc," 1902, p. 3). 



My personal acquaintance with marninepunctata dates from 1866, 

 when, in July of that year, I found it commonly on the lamps along 

 the roads at Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight. For many years after 

 that I saw little of it beyond meeting with an odd specimen or two 

 at Box Hill, in Surrey, and on the gas lamps around Blackheath, 

 in Kent ; but in 1887 I came across it in great numbers at East- 

 bourne, and since that time I have had the species more or less 

 continually under my notice. The conversion of the herbage- 

 covered slopes from the clift' to the beach into the western parades 

 had recently been completed (" Proc," 1896, p. 108), and the rough 

 stone retaining walls along portions of them were much favoured 

 by the species as resting places. It was in such situations that the 

 majority of the specimens were found. For some few years the 

 numbers met with steadily increased, the greatest abundance occur- 

 ring round about 1896, in which year I see from a note in my diary, 

 that on a walk along the half mile or so of the parade between the 

 " Wish Tower " and Holywell 102 specimens were noted, and it was 

 during this period, when the insect was at its greatest profusion, 

 that the most unusual forms were met with. 



Here the forms usually occurring vary between a pale bone- 

 coloured insect, practically without a trace of grey dusting, the usual 

 transverse lines and the submarginal tooth-marks (clouding) of a 

 pale greyish colour, so like Wood's figure 719 that one cannot help 

 believing that he took it from one of these specimens, to a heavily 

 grey-dusted insect fairly well represented by his figure 718, and 

 every conceivable intermediate between the two. One would have 

 expected, on our chalk soil, to have found the ground colour as 

 white as anywhere, but this is not so, it, as a rule, inclining far 

 more to a very pale buff. Barrett calls it cream-colour, but I think 

 the term I have used — bone-colour— more truly expresses it. 



Of the aberrations outside the above, perhaps the most remark- 

 able is one met with in 1896, of which three specimens were taken. 

 In this form the ground colour appears to be white, but the wings 

 are so covered with dark brown-grey dusting that the ground colour 

 is seen only as an irregular submarginal line, in the fringes, and on 

 the front of the thorax ; it is analogous to the so-called black forms 

 of Tejilirasia himuUdaria. Barrett's figure (" Lep. Brit. Is.," vol. 

 viii., pi. 331, f. 41') is taken from one of these specimens, and fairly 

 well represents it except in the matter of the ground colour, which 

 is not shown white enough. Another aberration, of which some 



