214! [September, 



Nole on Ledra aurita. — As this Hoinoptcron is not often rccorcled, a notice 

 of its capture on bracken at Ljclfortl, on August 12th, by Mrs. Glyde, of 

 Statsford, may be interesting to the readers of this Magazine. Curtis figures it on 

 plate 676 of liis " British Entomology," and remarks : " Whether tliese insects live in 

 their early stages in the frothy secretions that envelop those of kindred genera 

 I am ignorant, being unacquainted with their ceconomy." 



I have taken this insect in an immature condition several times; in the larva 

 stage hibernating in moss at the end of November, at the foot of an old oak, and in 

 May, in the pupa stage, from the branches of tlie oak by beating. — G-. C. Bignell, 

 ^aXiAiih: August lUh,\dO?>. 



On Cimbex connafa, Schr. — On August 2Sth, 190), I was so fortunate as to 

 beat from fully grown alder trees in a bog in the centre of Cutler's Wood at 

 Freston, in Suffolk, a very large Tenthredinid larva, such as I had never before 

 met with. 



The Larva was of a beautiful bright green, about two inches in length, with 

 a glabrous head, distinctly scabrous body with warty tubercles above the six true 

 legs, which were extended in so lateral a manner as to allow the coxeb to nearly 

 touch the surface upon which it walked. The grip is so tenacious that it is quite 

 impossible to dislodge it (consequently it rarely falls to the beating stick), and 

 copious clouds of tobacco smoke failed to affect it in the remotest degree. When 

 first touched brilliant green drops of liquid were exuded, like emeralds, from the 

 anterior spiracles ; and these, upon further provocation, were squirted in all direc- 

 tions to a distance of six or eight inches (reminding one of Formica rufa). It fed 

 upon alder leaves, supporting itself by twining its anal extremity around the edge 

 oP the leaf, till September 5th, when I found it had spun a cocoon within a leaf 

 which was lightly attached to the bottom of its cage. 



The Cocoon is quite unmixed with foreign matter (unlike that of C. femorata 

 with which earth particles are mingled), and at first is bright golden in colour, but 

 in a few hours it becomes of a very distinct reddish type ; it is semitranslucent, 

 very tough (though far less so than that of the hedge Trichiosoma) and cylindrical 

 with the extremities subtruncate, somewhat compressed laterally — the roundness 

 depending probably upon the contour of the enveloping leaf— with a somewhat 

 smooth and very dull surface, pressed so closely to the envelope as to show the 

 impressions of the mid- and lateral-ribs of the leaf, to which it is attached only by 

 a few frail strands at either extremity and easily disengaged. Its length is 24 mm. 



Within the cocoon is quite smooth and glittering, with the larval skin, which 

 is not entirely thrown off by the pupa, packed, together with the pupal envelope, 

 in the anal extremity. Between the cocoon and its encircling leaf is a single pellet 

 of frass. Doubtless the cocoon lies within the leaf, among other withei'ed leaves 

 the whole winter. 



From this cocoon a ? Cimbex connata, Schr., issued early in the morning of 

 July 11th, 1905. In emerging the imago entirely removes the operculum by severing 

 the tissue with its powerful jaws. 



This species has not before been noted in Suffolk, though there is an example 



