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y^y VOLUME XIV. V*/ 



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NATURAL HISTOEY OF DREPANA SICULA. 

 BY WILLIAM BUCKLER. 



I feel extremely obliged to Messrs. W. H. Glrigg and 

 W. J. Thomas, for giving me the opportunity of figuring and 

 describing the larva of this rare species ; for, although it had been 

 described and figured before, and the description in Stainton's Manual 

 is correct as far as it goes, and one of Hilbner's two figures is also 

 correctly drawn, yet as the other of his figures, really representing 

 falcatarict, has been reproduced under the wrong name in a recently 

 published book of Moths, the importance of a true representation and 

 description has become all the greater. 



Mr. Grigg first sent me an egg, which he had obtained June 7th, 

 1874, from one of two captured $ 's, kept alive for three days. 

 This egg was fertile, for during the next five days it went through the 

 first changes of colour, but finally shrivelled up. Last ja^ar, 1876, at 

 his instance also, Mr. Thomas sent me five eggs, laid on June 19th, by 

 a pinned moth ; these eggs, which reached me June 23rd, were 

 deposited — three of them in a little group on a piece of paper, and 

 the other two loose. 



From one of the eggs on the paper, the first larva appeared at 

 11 p.m. June 28th, and a second from one of the loose eggs during 

 the night of June 30th ; another of the eggs on the pajier never 

 changed colour, and the third, together with the second loose egg, 

 after going through the changes of colour, dried up. Thus I was 

 not very fortunate with the eggs, but most unhappily the young 

 larvto, after inspiring me with a grand hope, caused me a worse 

 disappointment ! 



The first that appeared was supplied withiii twenty minutes of 

 its emergence wil^ a tender leaflet, and a mature leaf, of Tilia 

 europcea ; but when I looked at it again — that is, on the following 

 morning — it was dead ! 



Thinking that pci'haps I had failed with the first from not giving 

 it time to eat its egg-shell, when the second larva was hatched I took 



E, 1877. 



