1909.] 199 



larger larvae, except that the anal plate was lighter and not so con- 

 spicuous : occasionally, in young individuals, this plate is altogether 

 pale instead of somevphat brown, and it is obviously variable in colour 

 in this species. 



The larva, in my experience, lives among and feeds on the male 

 carkins of Pinus pinaster^ joining them together into a loosely spun 

 mass, and living in a neat gallery lined with white silk, which it con- 

 structs, near the central stem, among the bases of the individual 

 catkins. The dry pellets of frass are buff-yellow, and from their 

 colour and appearance it seems to me probable that the pollen forms 

 the principal food of the larva, though it also eats the scales of which 

 the catkin is composed. When removed from its gallery, the larva is 

 extremely restless, wandering about rapidly and ceaselessly. No 

 imagines were reared from the individual larvae described at length 

 above, but examples of Olethreutes hifasciana were bred from larvae 

 critically compared, and agreeing absolutely, with those described, so 

 that the identity of the latter was established beyond all question. 

 In Lep. Brit. Isl., xi, 67 (1907), Barrett gives the larva, which he says 

 is " apparently undescribed," as " feeding in the young shoots and 

 among the male blossom-scales and pollen masses of Scotch Fir {Pinus 

 si/lvesfris), also on the stone pine (P. pinea)." In this district P. 

 sj/lvestris is far more plentiful than P. pinaster, but I have no evidence 

 as yet that O. hifasciana feeds here on the former pine, nor have I 

 ever taken the moth where the latter was absent, unless, indeed, this 

 was the case in the spots where two imagines were secured near 

 Ringwood, Hants, on July 3rd, 1890, and one — a remarkably dark 

 individual — at Aviemore, Inverness-shire, on July 2nd, 1908. 



PUPA. 



The following description was made on June 14th from two pupae 

 enclosed in slight white silk cocoons, mixed with catkin debris, found 

 in clusters of male catkins of Pinus pinaster, in the Isle of Purbeck, 

 on June 12th, 1901. 



Length, of No. 1 ( ? ) = 6 mm., of No. 2 ((? ) = 7 mm. Greatest breadth, of 

 No. 1 = 1'5 mm., of No. 2 = 2 mm. Fairly stout in proportion to its length, and 

 tapering gradually from the 3rd abdominal segment to the anal extremity. Shell 

 smooth and polished, particularly on the thorax and wing-cases, with noticeable 

 hairs ; in colour it is brownish-orange dorsally, but with the meso- and meta-thorax 

 somewhat paler, and pale brownish-orange ventrally ; segmental divisions very 

 clearly defined. Eye-covers rather prominent, the eyes gradually darkening until 

 they appear as large black spots, which are very conspicuous owing to the paleness 

 of the rest of the pupa. Anfennal cases terminating '5 mm. before the wing-cases 



