112 [October, 



down the back, wliich are easily perceptible through the leaf, when held up to the 

 light. I found these larvae last year at Cambridge, for the first time, on Nov. 6th, 

 they were tlien mostly young, whilst of the other three oak-feeding species almost 

 every mine was already empty. A week later, they were in extraordinary profusion, 

 such as I have never seen the like of in any other species ; the locality is rather 

 restricted, but the oak-bushes stand pretty thickly, and on nearly all of them literally 

 every leaf held from twenty to thirty larvae ; many had from fifty to one hundred, 

 and in one large leaf I counted one hundred and twenty-three. The effect upon the 

 appearance of the bushes was very conspicuous, hardly a vestige of green remaining ; 

 but at that season a casual observer would doubtless have set it down as the result 

 of natural decay. My specimens (kept here, where bred insects always appear con- 

 siderably later than elsewhere) did not begin to emerge until the first week in July ; 

 but Mr. Sang bred some in the middle of June, and about that time the imago may 

 usually be taken in abundance at Cambridge. — Id. 



Rare Lepidoptera in Kent. — It may interest some of your readers to learn that 

 I have had the good fortune to capture the following good and rare species during 

 the past month of August, whilst on a collecting excursion to the South-East coast 

 of Kent, and being in every case my own absolute capture, I can vouch for the 

 accuracy of the fact: — Two specimens of Mecyna polygonalis, two Margarodes 

 unionalis, one Sterrha sacraria, one Leucania albipuncta, one Laphygma exigua, 

 two Seliothis peltigera, one Heliothis armigera, &c. — W. H. TuGWELL, 3, Lewisham 

 Road, Greenwich : Septemher 6th, 1877. 



On the egg and food-plant of Thecla quercus. — Last year, after ineffectual 

 attempts to get ? s of this species to deposit eggs in confinement, I squeezed an egg 

 out of the ovipositor of one of them, and examined and described it ; thus I was 

 able to identify an egg lately sent me by Mr. G-. C. Bignell : on 30th last August, he 

 noticed a $ quercus sitting on a sallow leaf, and on plucking the leaf saw she had 

 deposited an egg just in the centre of it ; he tells me he had previously beaten larvae 

 from sallow bushes, but had been accustomed to account for their presence there by 

 supposing they had fallen or wandered from neighbouring oaks ; now, however, this 

 additional evidence points to sallow being sometimes, at least, the food-plant ; one 

 question remains — the sallow leaf would before long have fallen from the bush, and 

 decayed; and if the larva is not hatched till the spring (E. M. M., vi, 223), what 

 meanwhile becomes of the egg ? 



The egg of Thecla quercus is much of the LyccBiia form, hut larger, its diameter, 

 compared with that of the egg of Argiolus, being as 4 to 3 : it is round in outline, 

 flattened, and, with the exception of a central depression on (ho upper surface, covered 

 with irregular oblong reticulation, the lines of which — much more prominent on the 

 top than in Lyca-na — become so exaggerated on the sides that at the angles they stand 

 out like spines, and the egg looks quite like Vi rough. Echinus in miniature ; the under 

 surface, which rests on the leaf, is only granulated ; the shell under the reticulation 

 apparently has a very pale pinkish-brown tinge ; the reticulation is whitish.- J. 

 Hellins, Exeter : September 11th, 1877. 



Thecla ruhifoeding on Ulex. — At pp. 37, 38, E. M. M., vi, is an account of the 

 discovery of the larvae of the first brood of this sjRcies, feeding on Genista tinctoria 



