LEPIDOPTERA OF HAUTESWOIR : THE BREVENT. 825 



number of larvfe be obtained, certainly not fewer tban 1000. The 

 natural food-plant, in rural districts at any rate, is blaci\thorn. By 

 beating this in the daytime a moderate number of larva; may be 

 obtained, but by far the best plan is to go out any summer evening, say 

 between the beginning of June and the end of July, about an hour 

 before dusk, when the larvae leave their hiding-places and can be found 

 with the greatest ease as they ascend the blackthorn trees. There is 

 no difficulty whatever in getting a hundred in an hour. Then, when 

 the light begms to fail, a further supply may be collected by the aid 

 of a lantern. The younger one gets the larvte the better, as they are 

 not so much aftected by parasites, and if fed up on gooseberry or 

 currant they undoubtedly produce larger imagines. 



The larva drops very easily, and it is a good plan to take out with 

 one the bottcun of a chip- box pierced horizontally by a flower-stick 

 some two or three feet long. Larvte feeding in a clear place fall readily 

 into this apparatus when placed beneath them, and in the spring it 

 may be used in a similar way for Taeniocampids feasting on the sallow 

 blossoms. 



It will probably be news to many of your readers that, in Durham 

 and Northumberland, there is a constantly recurring jet-black form of 

 the larva of (jrossidariata. This I had never seen till the present year, 

 when I received twelve or fifteen among a comparatively small number 

 of larva3 sent me from a locality not far north of Newcastle-on-Tyne. 

 Buckler figured this black form of the larva on Plate cxxiv of vol. vii of 

 The Larvae of British Ihitterjiies and Moth^i (Ray Society, 1897), and in 

 the text on p. 151 (ad finera) he says : " These black larv^ at Newcastle 

 produce the most ordinary form of the imago. Mr. Robson has 

 since informed me that the larvie are not all sooty-black, but vary in 

 every degree, from the ordinary colour to uniformly black, even more 

 so than the specimen I have described. Mr. Robson has bred a great 

 many of them, but never got a variety of the imago from them." In 

 contradistinction to this black form of the larva, I, this year, found one 

 at Hazeleigh in which the black markings are to a very large extent 

 obsolete, so that the catorpillar presented a remarkably creamy appear- 

 ance. It possessed, however, the usual red lateral stripe, the absence 

 of which renders the black form so remarkable and (to the uninitiated) 

 difficult to recognise. The imago varies considerably in size, the largest 

 specimen I have expanding exactly 2in., whereas the expanse of the 

 smallest is only ly^in. 



(I'o be concluded.) 



Lepidoptera of Haute=Savoie : The Brevent. 



By J. W. TUTT, F.E.S. 

 Chamonix does not give up its insect treasures without hard work 

 and continuous search. Meeting M. Robert, a well-known French 

 coleopterist, at Argentiere, he informed me that the valley has produced 

 nothmg really good under 2000 metres, but that, once that elevation 

 was reached, many good insects were to be obtained. This was even 

 more strikingly true of lepidoptera. I had practically made up my 

 mind that there was no good species of Rhopalocera in the valley, 

 when I selected a fine morning, August LSth, to go up the Jirevent, 

 and a start was made shortly after 7 a.m. This outing brushed away 



