NEAR EASTERN URBICOLIDS. 193 



Notes on the Coleophoridae. {With tiro Plates). 



By Hy. J. TUENEE, F.E.S. 



COLEOPHORA BICOLORELLA. 



This nut-feeding species is very local but abundant, as a rule, when 

 it is found. On May 29th, 1904, beyond Chatham, on nut bushes 

 growing by the roadside going towards the Hook and Hatchet, a 

 hostelry well known to entomological wanderers, I obtained some dozens 

 of the cases of this species. Most of them were obtained from the top- 

 most shoots, two, three, four or five on each, and frequently three on 

 one leaf. Only a few were found low down, most were exposed to wind, 

 sun and dust. The larvfe appear to be very restless, the blotches were 

 innumerable and small. But very few traces of the larvte were noted 

 lower down on the bushes, and the very few larv^ found there had 

 probably fallen from their higher perches. As a rule the cases are 

 affixed to the under surfaces of the leaves, and irregular oblong blotches 

 are made between the chief ribs. The cases are made of the epidermis 

 of the nut leaves, which turns rich brown in colour when dead, thus 

 giving them a parti-coloured appearance. When a larva wishes to 

 enlarge its case it attaches it to the edge of a leaf, which edge it splits 

 and eats out the cellular tissue for some distance around the opening 

 thus made. The two surfaces of the leaf thus separated are fastened 

 together with silk around the boundary of the mine, and form the 

 addition, which is then cut off from the leaf, it having already been 

 attached to the mouth of the older case, which persists. The mouth of 

 the case of this species is very oblique to the axis of the case, and thus 

 when the new portion, which is irregular in shape, is added, it gives a 

 clumsy and crested appearance. 



It was found that the larvte were quiet if kept in deep shade. Only 

 a few imagines were bred as most of the larvte produced abundance of 

 Chalcids. The first imago came out on June 80th. 



Cases of this species have been met with on alder at Oxshott, and 

 on June 18th of the same year I found one on birch (!) at Chiselhurst. 



I have since bred this species freely, and have obtained the ova, but 

 unfortunately either omitted to describe them or have mislaid my MS. 

 However, photographs of the ova and of the micropylar area were taken 

 by Mr. Clarke, and Plates xxii. and xxiii. give very fair representations 

 of the ova in situ and of the variability of the micropyle, 



[Note : — C. hicolorella, was described first from imagines bred from cases 

 found on alder (Stainton, Ent. Ann., p. 89, 1861.). Subsequently the imagines 

 bred from hazel were described and named C. politeUa (Scott, Tr. Ent. Soc. Loud, 

 (2), vol. v., p. 410, pit. 17, fig. 4, 1861). This latter is placed in Staudinger's 

 Catalog, 1901, as a synonym of C. fuscedmeUa ! Collectors have generally con- 

 sidered the alder and nut feeding species to be one and the same species on account 

 of the identical characters of both, and imagines. Here is a problem to be solved.] 



Near Eastern Urbicolids. 



By PHILIP P. GEAVES, F.E.S. 

 I am informed by Dr. J. L. Eeverdin of Geneva, who has done so 

 much in recent years to elucidate the difficult problem of the relation- 

 ship of the various Palaearctic Urbicolids, and especially those of the 

 September ISth, 1914. 



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