1921.] 129 



I paid him to leave tliem in the ground ; but eventually he was 

 obliged to dig many of them up to make room for the extension of 

 a poultry run, which he had added as an adjunct to his garden, 

 Avith, I believe, good results. But after this there was com])aratively 

 little of the variation in the larvae, showing that previously they had 

 assimilated themselves to the colour of the dark stems of the bushes. 

 But I do not think it made any difference whatever to the variation 

 of the imagines. During the last two years there were practically 

 no larvae in the garden, nor anywhere else in this district. 



In 1919 I could not find even a single one in the garden, and 

 in 1920 only about half-a-dozen, which I left. Several collectors here 

 were equally unsuccessful in other parts of the district. It will now 

 probably take some years for the species to get up to its normal 

 numbers if it has to depend on the very few which may have survived ; 

 and if it should possibly come about more rapidly through migrants 

 from distant localities, it will be interesting to note how many years it 

 will be before varieties become numerous, because even here the varieties 

 are very local, being almost confined to the near town gardens. One 

 may collect thousands of larvae from the village gardens only five or six 

 miles away, and breed scarcely a moth worth setting. 



The most interesting variety has been nigrosparsata, as it varies 

 infinitely in itself from quite ordinary specimens with sparse spotting to 

 the extreme blue-black form var. nigra. The race, too, has developed more 

 rapidly than any other; for at the time I began to study the species, the 

 form, so far as I know, had never been seen at all in this district, nor did 

 it turn up until several years afterwards, the first notes I have of the 

 form being from the 1910 wild larvae, when during it and the following 

 year several appeared in the cages. 



From that time they increased in numbers rapidly, so that in 1915 

 I had in the cages over 100 specimens, and in 1917 the form had so 

 largely increased that my note-book states that "towards ten per cent, 

 of the wild larvae must have produced var. nigrosjyctrsata.'''' Of these, 

 the great majority, of course, were very ordinary examples of the form ; 

 but with them were a large number of exceedingly fine ones, and of 

 great diversity in appearance. It is quite impossible by description to 

 give the least idea of the variation and beauty of the many forms, but 

 I have no doubt that my series of nigrosparsata is the finest repre- 

 sentation of it in existence. One of the prettiest forms when fresh, 

 and a not uncommon one, is that to which Raynor has given the name 



