1900.] 



less every day in the vicinity of the hotel. The general result is poor, 

 with the exception of the Zelleria about which you ask particulars. 

 I can only say that I beat it out of a stunted oak bush under some 

 rocks at about a stone's throw from the plantation at the back of the 

 hotel. I knew that I had got a good thing, and spent an hour search- 

 ing and beating all round. There is no doubt whatever about the 

 capture ; I took it about 6 p.m. on August 17th or 18th. There was 

 abundance of " London Pride " growing all round, and I thought that 

 this might have been its food-plant. I do not possess any foreign 

 moths whatever." 



As this communication set the question of capture quite at rest, 

 I enquired as to whether any species of the food-plant {Phillp'ea, a 

 South European shrub) is to be found in gardens in the district. This 

 Mr. Cruttwell had not ascertained, but Mr. W. F. de V. Kane now 

 writes, " Phillyrea is not uncommon in gardens and shrubberies ; P. 

 angustifolia, latifolia^ &c., are favourite evergreens, and P. Vilmori- 

 niana, though perhaps tenderer and rarer, is a choice plant in the 

 South and West. As to Zelleria pliilhjrella, it must, I suspect, have 

 been introduced in some species of Phillyrea^ 



This insect, which very closely resembles Zelleria hepariella, was 

 originally reared by M. Milliere from blossoms of Phillyrea angusti- 

 folia, and Mr. Staintou's interesting account of his introduction to 

 this larva by its discoverer, on one of the hills near Cannes, and his 

 subsequent capture of imagines in the same place, will be found in 

 the Entomologist's Annual for 1868, pp. 145-6. As this occurred in 

 the spring, Mr. Cruttwell's examples must belong to a second gene- 

 ration. 



It is, as already remarked, wonderfully like Z. hepariella, but has 

 in the middle of the fore-wings a distinct black discal dot, which is 

 absent in hepariella. This character catches the eye at once, but the 

 colour of the fore-wings is not so uniform as in the latter species, 

 there being obscure stripes of yellower-red above the principal ner- 

 vures near the base, the hind-wings are paler, as is also the head. Yet 

 so near is it to hepariella that Mr. Stainton referred the first specimen, 

 which was sent to him in 1866 for examination, to that species. He 

 afterwards fully recognised its distinctness, and described and figured 

 it and its larva in the " Natural History of the Tine'ina," vol. xi. Here 

 its distribution is given as, besides the South of France, Leghorn and 

 Greece, " so that it is probably distributed over a large portion of the 

 South of Europe." In his " Tineina of Southern Europe" he simply 



