24 (January, 1911 



spruce fir. He informed me that the moths had been taken in 

 Hampshire, in a Scotch pine wood near Bournemouth, from which 

 spruce was entirely absent, and in which he had never seen the 

 species I described as the true abietella. I thereupon advised him to 

 look for the lai'vse of sjdendideUa in cones of Scotch pine, or, if 

 these proved unproductive, in resinous nodules on the trunks. On 

 November 18th, 1902, when I went over to join in a search in the 

 wood in question, my friend showed me a cage containing various 

 larvae that had already come out of cones of Scotch pine (Pinus 

 sylvestris) , lately collected there and elsewhere in the near neighbour- 

 hood. Some of these were already hibernating full-fed in the loose 

 sand at the bottom of the cage, curled up in round fiat domiciles, com- 

 posed of reddish silk coated with sand, which I should have referred to 

 splendidella, H.-S., but that, to my surprise, the two larvae that were 

 available for examination, agreed with Mr. Atmore's description [Ent. 

 Mo. Mag., xxiv, 223 (1888)] of those of abietella* Fb. (decuriella, 

 Hb.), and not with Mr. Buckler's descriptions (op. cit., xxiv, 269-271) 

 of those that belonged to the former species ! This, taken in con- 

 junction with the facts that no important differences have been noticed 

 in the larvae, and that from the many tenanted Scotch pine cones that 

 were collected in the autumn of one year or another, by Major 

 Eobertson, near Bournemouth, two veritable examples, which I have 

 seen, of abietella, Fb., but none of splendidella, H.-S., have been reared, 

 the one by Mr. A. Thurnall on July 11th, 1903, the other by the Major 

 in a later year, leaves little doubt that all these cone- infesting larvae 

 were those of abietella. 



On November 19th and 23rd, 1902, I collected, in the Isle of 

 Purbeck, Dorset, a few Scotch pine cones showing precisely similar 

 larval traces to those met with at Bournemouth ; these were found in 

 a frequently-worked pine wood where the imago of abietella has 

 occasionally occurred to me, but that of splendidella has never been 

 seen, and were doubtless referable to the former, though, like my 

 Bournemouth cones, they yielded no full-fed larvae, and were probably 

 collected too late. Owing to absence from home, no earlier search on 

 my part had been possible in either locality. The larvae may be found 

 about October, somewhat distorting, into a more or less curved shape, 

 the well-grown green cones on the trees ; the indications that should 

 be looked for are a hole in the concave side oi the cone, and some 



* In his " Revi-sion of the British Phi/citidce and Galleridce," publi.shed in Ent. Mo. Mag., 

 xxli (1885), Ragonot, on page 52, gave preference to the name "decuriella, Hb.," for this species, 

 but subsequently in the Romanoff Memoires, vii, '20u (18'.>3), he pointed out tliat it should be 

 called " abietella, Fab."— E. R. B. 



