146 I July, 



mission garden, and also on a gum-tree trunk quite away by the other garden. 

 They would be there on one night, but miss the next, and on a subsequent night 

 there again, and performing these strange evolutions. The larger ones, which 

 seem to bo of the same species, were caught singly, flying in the same neigh- 

 bourhood." [Later] " I am glad timt you are noticing those queer little moths 

 that settled on the tree trunks to perform their war-dance. They were so curious 

 that Arthur noticed them also, and asked me to tell you about them. It was just 

 at dusk that they would begin their antics, and you might disturb them, and go on 

 netting, but still they would return to their chosen spot, but always only the smaller 

 ones. They had the appearance of quivering on the tree-trunk on the tips of their 

 toes. I believe that I saw them once in Annshaw on a blue-gum trunk doing just 

 the same, and tried to tell you about it. I thought then that they had just emerged, 

 and were drying their wings, but do not think so now, because we watched them fly 

 and return persistently, and on several evenings, in separate places, and on two 

 kinds of tree. The larger ones I have met with flying singly in returning to the 

 house, perhaps a hundred yards away." 



[This insect is one of the Tineina — the larger ones mentioned being the 

 females — yet could hardly give one at first sight the idea of a Tinea. The male is 

 Ij inch in expanse, and the female If inch, and larger than Melisxoblaptes anellus, 

 to which it bears in shape a great resemblance. The fore-wings of the male are 

 pointed, hollowed beneath the tip, with very oblique hind margin, brownish-grey, 

 striped longitudinally with ashy-white ; hind-wings very long, twice as long to the 

 apex as their breadth, greyish-white with a faint purple flush ; cilia long. Female 

 half an inch larger, the fore- wings broader and more blunt or rounded behind, grey 

 with minute longitudinal darker lines, and a short distinct white discal streak ; hind- 

 wings broader, dark grey ; whole surface very glossy, antennte in both sexes simple 

 and small, but thickened at the base ; palpi small, widely divergent. In Lord 

 Walsingham's hands for determination, and, if necessary, description.] 



Eretmocera Icetissima, Wlsm. — "We have again caught Lord Walsingham's tiny 

 moths close to, and upon, the dog-bush I told you of before " — Exomis oxyrioides — 

 " it is a common weed here. I searched the place another day, and again found one 

 specimen, but it was sitting upon wild asparagus." [Later.] " The little leetissima 

 is a thing of joy; so far as I can trace it flies only by day, and prefers bright sun- 

 shine, and just dances round a bush in blossom, looking like a red gleam. The only 

 way to secure it is to strike at once, since it is too small to be netted off the bush. 

 It visits tiny blossoms on bushes or plants, but never seems to visit the flowers of 

 fruit trees." 



[My correspondent, while at Annshaw, farther south in the colony, searched 

 the Exomis often and with great care in the hope of discovering something of the 

 habits, and of the preparatory states of these most lovely crimson atoms — which 

 possess antennae formed almost as in the Sphingida — but she found only that the 

 minute yellow blossoms greatly attracted the moths, while no indication of the larva 

 was discoverable, and that with this species are to be found E. scatophila in larger 

 numbers, and its yellow variety (?) E. moribunda.'] 



Buntingvillo, Umtata, 



Traiiskei, S. A. 



