46 



THE REPORT OF THE 



No. 19 



NOTE ON THE GREAT LEOPARD MOTH. 



EcpaniJieria scribonia, Stoll. 

 By Rev. C. J. S. BETurxE, London, Ont. 



On the 6th of May, 1903, in a wood some six miles south of London, I had the good fortune 

 to find a large hairy larva, rolled up in a ball and occupying a round cell that it had made of 

 dried leaves beneath a log. As Mr. Arthur Gibson, of the Experimental Farm at Ottawa, was 

 then engaged in the study of the Arctiadre in connection with his valuable paper on the genus 

 Apantesis, recently published in the Canadian Entomologist, I sent the specimen to him. A few 

 days after it reached him — on May 11th — it assumed the pupa state and on the 4th of June the 

 imago appeared. To our mutual delight, it proved to be the Great Leopard Moth {Ecpantheria 

 scrihonia, Stoll). 



Though this moth is rarely taken in Canada, the larva is occasionally found in the autumn 

 when it is full grown and in the spring, as in the present instance ; it hibernates under logs, the 

 loose bark of decaying trees or other suitable hiding lilace. Whether or not it takes any food 

 in the spring before changing into a chrysalis is a matter of doubt. The specimen referred to 

 evidently did not, as I found it in its winter quarters and it had no food after its capture. The 

 food-plants, so far known, are the Willow, wild Sun-flower (Beliantlms decapetahts). Poke-berry 

 (Phytolacca), ard Plantain. 



Mr. Gibson has kindly furnished me with the following careful description of my specimen 

 when it reached him : 



"Length 43 mm. General ai)pearance — a stout, black larva, with stiff, shiny, jet-black 

 bristles. Head 4 mm., wide, subquadrate, flattened in front, only slightly bilobed at vertex, 

 black, shiny excepting posterior upper part of cheek near segment 2, which is pale 

 brownish ; median suture and epistoma dull whitish ; mandibles slightly reddish ; hairs on face 

 mostly black, reddish at tips. Body stout, dull black, with patches and streaks of velvety black 

 on dorsum ; distinctly yellowish in the incisures ; lowtr lateral and ventral surface paler. 

 Tubercles large, all black, excepting vi., vii. and viii., which are a dark amber colour, each 

 bearing a bunch of stiff, black, birbed bristles; from v., vi., vii. and viii. many of the 



