128 THE entomologist's REOORO. 



and downwards, endinj? in iv, which is the most prominent part of the 

 segment, sloping regularly to the front, but rapidly behind to the 

 incision, the stripe occupies anterior three-quarters of segment, the 

 area from this to the subdorsal stripe is brown, and includes the red 

 spiracle; from the subdorsal to the dorsal stripe is also brown, but 

 narrowed, the front and back portions of segments are bright green, the 

 hair spots brighter and paler green. The 8th abdominal segment wants 

 the dorsal white stripes, but the dorsal brown area is full width, a 

 single dorsal tubercle on a slight hump, subdorsal and lateral stripes 

 are on 1 to 7. Except lateral anterior edge of 9 green, 9 and 10 

 are brown, 9 with ii and iii, 10 with iii, white. The 1st thoracic has 

 a deep black-brown plate and yellow anterior margin, green below with 

 red spiracle. The 2nd and 8rd thoracics have no white laterally, are 

 black in front, yellow in line of tubercles, and green behind, but the great 

 dorsal brown stripe is present, slightly modified by the yellow and black 

 rings. When the larva sits Sphinx-like these segments are puffed out 

 into a large ball, and show their colours strongly. Head, deep brown-black 

 with tine yellow-white marblings. The hairs of general surface are 

 few and weak, those of tubercles, white, 2mm. to 3mm. long, except 

 two or three on each tubercle, which are 6mm. or 7mm. Below white 

 lateral stripe the colour is brown (chocolate) with paler hair spots, and 

 a little green close to stripe on 1st, 5th, or 6th segments, prolegs paler, 

 true legs reddish. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



PoLY(iAMY IN FiDONiA coNSPicuATA. — The late Mr. George Jackson, 

 of York, told me in January, 1898, that some years previously a male 

 specimen bred from eggs had copulated with, and fertilised, three 

 females, and that in every case the eggs laid by each female were fertile. 

 — William Hewett, York. March, 1902. 



On an abnormal proboscis in Manduca atropos. — Some eighteen 

 months ago, my friend, the Rev. C. R. N. Burrows, provided me with 

 sundry imagines of M. atropas, including several cripples, as being 

 of more use to me than to him. Amongst these was one that provides 

 the specimen now recorded. The peculiarity of this proboscis is that 

 one-half of it is much longer than normal, the other much shorter. 

 The short one, however, may have been as long as the other as it is 

 obviously shortened by fracture. Whether this fracture took place 

 before or after the specimen came into my possession I do not know, nor 

 whether it was the result of accident or whether it was broken of 

 necessity in the escape of the imago from the pupa-case. Un- 

 fortunately the specimen had been devoted to other uses before I noted 

 the malformation of the proboscis, nor was Mr. Burrows able to verify 

 which pupa-case it had emerged from. It is, therefore, merely a guess 

 that the specimen was a cripple from some injury to the pupa at an 

 early stage of its existence, and that the malformation of the proboscis 

 was due to the same cause. The normal length of the proboscis of M. 

 atropus is about 16mm., in this specimen it is about 21mm. It has some 

 irregularities about the middle, and beyond this is rather thin, weak 

 and pale, looking very much as though it might have been stretched 

 out. The extremity is thicker than normal. That it really is stretched 

 out seems confirmed by the fact that, counting as well as I can, 1 



