1901.] 121 



NOTES ON METZNERIA LITTORELLA, Dgl. 

 BY EUSTACE K. BANKES, M.A., F.E.S. 



Ill the South of England the extremely local and nuich-))i''ze(l 

 Metzneiin littorella, Dgl., usually reaches the perfect state in the 

 month of May : it was originally taken, at Ventnor, fsle of Wight, 

 early in Ma}" by the late Mr. S. Stevens, and Lord Walsingham, who 

 re-discovered it there in 1898, says (Ent. Mo. Mag., Ser. 2, xi, 127) 

 that it occurs "from May 6th to 29th (and perhaps later)." My dis- 

 appointment, therefore, may well be imagined wdien, by the end of 

 May last, not one single imago had appeared in the breeding-cages 

 which contained two large batches of seed-heads of Plantago coronopns, 

 collected by myself at random (for of the weather worn, often mud- 

 covered, heads, one could not tell the tenanted from the untenanted 

 ones) in two spots, near Yentnor, on January 30th and 31st, and one 

 small batch kindly sent me previously from there by Lord Walsing- 

 ham, who has recently discovered and described the larva and its 

 habits (Ent. Mo. Mag., I. c). At length, how^ever, my spirits began 

 to revive when, on June l7th, my eyes were gladdened by the sight of 

 a freshly-emerged imago. This was soon followed by others, and in 

 course of time the two large batches of seed-heads each yielded a 

 nice series of moths, which emerged June 17th — July 9th, and June 

 Iflth — July 25th, respectively, while from the small batch four moths 

 were bred, June 21st — 29th. I can only suppose that the retarded 

 emergence of the moths was due to the lateness of the season, com- 

 bined with the fact that the plantain-heads were kej^t under a box- 

 bush in my garden, out of the direct reach of the sun's rays, until 

 about the middle of May, when they were transferred to a tireless 

 room, facing north. The seed-heads also yielded numbers of small 

 ichneumon flies, not yet identified. 



M. littorella is by no means so regular as some species at emerg- 

 ing from the pupa at a particular time of day, but the imagines 

 usually did so between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., though some appeared 

 before the former, and others after the latter hour. They are excep- 

 tionally sluggish and retiring in habit, as noticed by Lord Walsingham 

 in nature, and very difficult to find and secure, even in the breeding- 

 cage, where they like to hide away from sight among the mass of 

 plantain stalks, resting wnth their peculiarly narrow forms placed 

 lengthwise along the stalks to which they cling. The males, as a 

 whole, emerged before the females, nearly all the early individuals 

 being males, while nearly all the late ones were females ; but, of 



