February, 1911.1 25 



frass beside tlie edge of it. Oue may, at the same time, find some 

 quite small, dead and dry, cones, wliieli show an exit hole, and in 

 which the larvfc of ahieteUa probably once fed. Even in the latter half 

 of IJovember, the fresh pellets of frass round the holes in some of the 

 green cones are so small as to show that the occupants are quit« 

 immature, but these backwai'd larvse will be dealt with later on. 



To find larviB of D. abietella feeding in well-grown cones* of 

 Scotch pine, leaving these in the autumn, when full-fed, and spinning 

 hibernacula in the manner of splendidella, with the obvious intention 

 of remaining therein until the spring, and then leaving them to 

 construct true cocoons in which to pupate, was most perplexing. Mr. 

 E. A. Atmore, in Ent. Mo. Mag., xxiv, 221-224 (1888), had stated 

 that the larvae fed in shoots, usually in those of the previous year, but 

 occasionally in those of the year or in very small cones, of Scotch 

 pine, becoming full-fed in the spring, and I myself had bred, a series 

 of ahieteUa from larvse found, near Eingwood, Hants, in shoots of 

 the same pine on April 28th, 1891, and May 12th, 1892. The 

 idea that we might perhaps have, in this coimtry, two very closely 

 allied species confused imder the name abietella, being unsupported by 

 any particle of evidence, one was forced to the conclusion that ahieteUa 

 has, even, it may be, in the same district (the locality near Eingwood 

 and that near Bournemouth are only six miles apart), two different 

 life-cycles. 



More recently I was able to consult, in the Eomanoff Memoires 

 (vol. vii), the first part of Eagonot's " Monographie des Phycitinx et 

 des Galeriinx," and was much interested to learn from it that two 

 very similar life-cycles had been observed on the Continent. Whereas 

 Mons. A. Constant's account, which we there find, of the larval habits 

 practically agrees with Mr. Atmore' s, and with my own earlier expe- 

 rience near Eingwood, except that Constant found the larvse in Pinus 

 maritimus instead of P. sylvestris, Eagonot says that the lai-va, 

 according to Zincken, " lives in the fir-cones (Abies) feeding on the 

 seeds thereof ; the infested cones are distorted, and are also to be 

 recognised by the frass of the larva which appears on the cui-ved side. 

 It is full-grown in October and bm-ies itself in the ground in 

 November, making for itself a cocoon from the drbris of fir-needles 

 and moss. It is best to pick up these cones in October; they fall 

 owing to the operations of the larva.f It pupates in the spring, and 



* Ragonot had told us in Ent. Mo. Mag., xxiv, 224 (c/. xxli, 52) that the larva lived " in the 

 cones, young shoots, and decayed wood of the C<mifer(e," but without further detail. — P>. R. B. 



t In the case of Puias Hi/lveMrU the cones appear to remain firmly attached to the trees, even 

 after the full-fed larNie have vacated them.— E. R. B. 



C 



