1876.; U 



aberration is occasionally met with on the continent. I can find no English specimen 

 resembling mine. — Batteeshell GriiL, M.D., 9, Cambridge Terrace, Eegent's Park : 

 'Srd May, 1876. 



Food-plant of Agrotis agatltina. — It may be remembered that I tried, through 

 the pages of tliis journal, to obtain information touching the rearing of this beautiful 

 moth. One collector in Yorkshire possesses the secret, but refuses to impart the 

 same unless for money. Mr. Tugwell, of Grreenwich, on the contrary, kindly in- 

 forms me he feeds the larvte on Erica tetralix, and succeeds in rearing the moth. 

 This morning I took my sweeping-net into a low pine wood, with a carpeting of 

 Calluna vulgaris and Erica cinerea. I soon filled my boxes with innumerable larva3 

 of Agrotis porphyrea, and many A. agathina, the latter being still mostly very small. 

 I noticed, however, what may turn out to be valuable, and indeed the real secret of 

 success in raising agathina, viz., that where the Calluna grew by itself, I found few 

 or no agathina larvae, but where E. cinerea occurred in large patches, I found them 

 very frequent, sometimes as many as seven or eight being found at once in the net. 

 Bearing this in mind, I intend, when the larvjB are full-grown in the end of May, to 

 feed them exclusively on Erica cinerea and tetralix, and have great hopes of success. 

 — G. NoRMAx, Cluny Hill, Forres : Uh April, 1876. 



Description of the larva, lJ'c, of Anarta melanopa. — For eggs of this, aiid of 

 the following species also, I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. J. T. Carrington, 

 who sent them to me from Perthshire. 



I received the eggs on June 41 h, 1875 ; the larvse hatched on the lOtli; they 

 soon began to feed on tender leaves of Arbutus unedo, or Luzulapilosa, sallow, flowers 

 of HelianthemtDii vtdgare, and on Vaccinium vitis-idaa, and by the 16th were 

 growing and thriving well. By July 3rd they were three-quarters of an inch long, 

 and feeding only on sallow, Salix caprcEa and S. acuminata, having gradually deserted 

 the other food-plants supplied to them ; those that now survived, some two or three 

 only, continued to feed till after the middle of the month, and about the end of the 

 third week in July turned to pupa), one of them, without having attempted a cocoon, 

 became a bare pupa on the surface of the soil ; but as another entered the earth, and 

 apparently formed a cocoon, we may suppose the latter woidd be the habit in a 

 state of nature. 



The egg is almost globular, the shell delicate, shining, with rather more than 

 fifty ribs, the transverse reticulation shallow, the top a little puckered ; colour when 

 received, a delicate pink. 



The newly-hatched larva with sixteen legs, but the ventral pair on seventh not 

 serviceable, and those on eighth smaller than those on ninth and tenth ; the usual 

 warts small in size, and all placed on little eminences, and furnished with longish 

 pale bristles ; the colour semi-translucent whitish, but the back purplish, and the 

 head pale brown, the warts black. 



In about a week, the legs on the 8th became nearly as much developed as tho.sc 

 on the ninth and tenth, and those on the 7th increased in size ; the whole body 

 greenish, the back became brownish with pale central stripe, also a wider pale sub- 

 dorsal stripe with a brownish thread through it. In about another fortnight the 

 length attained was three-quarters of an inch, the figure of tlie usual yoclua type, 



