FURTHER NOTES ON ABRAXAS GROSSULARIATA. 83 



8. tabani forme. Doubtless its habits vary according to its opportu- 

 nities, but I should hardly expect it to occur in cut stumps, unless 

 they were making a vigorous attempt to grow again, i.e., I doubt if 

 really dying material would suit it. I think all the Mgeria&ae inhabit 

 living material, but Mgeria culiciformis and JE. asiliformis (cynipi- 

 formis) like it when all but dying, as in stumps. Nearly all require 

 some wound or injury, but what this may amount to seems trifling or 

 nil in a few species. 



Further notes on Abraxas grossulariata. 



By (Rev.) G. H. RAYNOR, M.A. 



Since you were good enough to publish an article of mine on the 

 variation of this fascinating species (in Knt. liec, xiv., 321-5 and 

 xv., 8-11), an interval of four years has elapsed, during which the 

 popularity of the insect seems to have advanced by leaps and bounds, 

 at least, if one may judge by the heavy prices realised at auction for 

 extreme aberrations. I think I never remember A. grossulariata larva? 

 being so scarce as they were in 1906. A couple of hours I spent 

 hunting hedges in my glebe fields one night, produced exactly 

 twelve larvae, whereas in an ordinary season I could have got 500 ; 

 the soil here is heavy clay. On lighter soil, about three miles distant, 

 things were not so bad, as with the help of a friend I secured about 

 100 larva? on each of two evenings ; however, even there, in a 

 favourable season our scores would have been multiplied by six. The 

 result of this scarcity was that I did not breed a single good form from 

 these local larva?. Also the larvae I received — in no great numbers — 

 from many other parts of the kingdom (including Lancashire) produced 

 nothing worth setting, with the exception of two nice specimens 

 which emerged from a small lot sent from Monmouthshire. One of 

 these was a very beautiful siibvinlacca, deeply suffused with brown- 

 violet, except that the basal half of every wing is white. The specimen, 

 as is usual in this aberration, is a male. The other " Monmouthshire 

 beauty " is unique in my collection, in that the outer margins of the 

 hindwings are entirely devoid of the usual series of black spots, except 

 that there is a tiny one situated centrally on the margin of the left 

 wing. In this specimen (a female) the outer margins of the forewings 

 are also very sparsely spotted, there being four spots on that of the 

 right wing, and three on that of the left; so that the insect altogether 

 has a very pretty light appearance. It is the nearest approximation I 

 possess to the very rare aberration albomarginata. 



But my far greatest success of the season was the rearing, from 

 Lancashire parents, of a family of ab. Intra, small indeed in numbers, 

 but of surpassing beauty. The ground colour is of a lovely bright 

 canary yellow, being thus intermediate between the ordinary dull, 

 slightly-luteous form of this aberration, and the deep-gamboge one 

 figured by Barrett. In the above-mentioned family were a few 

 specimens in which the forewings had an unusual amount of black, 

 and, among these, two in which the black surface is so exaggerated as 

 to cover about two-thirds and three-quarters of the front wings re- 

 spectively. These are magnificent specimens — I almost think the 

 finest forms of grossulariata I have ever seen — and are well worthy of 

 the new varietal name ab. nigrolutea, n. ab. Entomologists aspiring 



