187(5.1 29 



IVATURAL HISTORY OF LYCJENA AROIOLUS. 

 BY WILLIAM BUCKLER. 



I have loug wished to work out the economy of this species, es- 

 pecially with regard to the question of a second brood, and at length, 

 partly by the kind help of friends, and partly by a lucky find of my 

 own, I have been able to settle my problem. 



In the spring of 1862, I had a few eggs laid by a captured female 

 on the footstalks of flowers of Ilex aquifbUum ; the larvse hatched 

 during the last two days of May, fed first on the flower-buds of holly, 

 afterwards on the young green berries, and by June 29th, that is, about 

 thirty days, had changed to pupae ; but, as no butterfly ever appeared 

 from any of them, my attempt at that time came to an unsuccessful end. 



Last year, I received on June 20th, two full-grown larva^, feed- 

 ing on tender young leaves of holly, and which had been taken by 

 beating, a day or two previously, by Mr. Gr. P. Mathew, R.N". ; one of 

 them had already ceased to feed, and had changed colour ; the other 

 was still feeding well, and I watched it eating a large piece out of a 

 fresh gathered tender leaf ; the next day, this also rapidly changed 

 colour, and on June 25th and 26th, both successively became pupse : 

 one fixed with its head downwards on the upper-side of a leaf, the 

 other with its head upwards on the under-side. From the second of 

 these two pupa>, after 18 clays, there came a female butterfly, on July 

 14th ; the first pupa remained over till May 25th, 1876, when it pro- 

 duced an ichneumon. 



After this, on 5th August, I received from Mr. E. F. Bisshopp, 

 of Ipswich, who had taken great pains to secure from female butter- 

 flies of the second or summer flight, a batch of seven or eight eggs, 

 laid just beneath the flower heads of an umbel of Hedera helix ; un- 

 fortunately, only two of them proved fertile, and I had the further 

 misfortune to kill one of the larva?, whilst changing its food, but in the 

 very same process was afterwards lucky enough to find compensation 

 for its loss. For, early in September, I found I had unconsciously 

 gathered with a head of ivy flower buds, resting on one of the flower- 

 stalks, a larva in its third moult : and, being thus led to look for more, 

 I afterwards found two others in similar situations. 



The dates for the changes of the larva, which I succeeded in 

 carrying through from the egg, and which, from the first, ate tender 

 ivy leaves rather than flowers, are as follows : hatched August 8th ; 

 moulted by the 12th, and a second time by the 16th, and a third time 

 by the 20th ; after that, I have recorded a moult betw'een September 



