76 THE entomologist's record. 



boles of brown or grey. But the light fades ; the flocking birds 

 hnrry home to roost ; the rooks and starlings leave the fields and seek 

 the shelter of the woods ; whilst the chaffinches and fieldfares nestle in 

 the thick hedgeside. The radiant glory of the bright day slowly 

 departs; the pale blue of the sky above changes into a dome of ever- 

 deepening azure looming above us ; the western horizon fades from 

 crimson to orange, from orange to amber, from amber to the palest 

 green, which slowly blends into the blue of the sky that deepens above ; 

 and the night gathers swiftly " to banish Even from the sky." The 

 silver stems of the birch begin to look ghost-like in the increasing 

 gloom ; whilst the oak wood yonder takes on a cloak of deepest brown, 

 then sombre grey, until it fades into the darkness of the night, which 

 has now really come. 



JNlotes OTi /Ipliomia sociella. 



(with plate.) 

 By W. P. BLACKBUENE-MAZE, F.E.S. 

 The following is a short account of the accompanying plate, which 

 is from a photograph that several of the readers of The Entomologist'' s 

 Record have already received from me. In March, 1894:, I received 

 from a nursery gardener at Staple in Kent a cluster of cocoons which 

 he had come across whilst digging in tlie garden. I put the cluster in 

 an ordinary large flower-pot and damped it occasionally. The 

 cocoons were very firmly woven together, and the whole cluster was 

 very compact. I detached several cocoons in March and found a 

 larva in all of them ; this had evidently hybernated in that state, and 

 had turned to a pupa during the spring. On dissecting the cocoons, I 

 found that in each one there was an outside covering of silk, which 

 was rough and not very thickly woven together. Within this was a 

 second covering, which was finer and more closely woven. Then 

 followed a third covering, which was very fine and was tightly 

 woven together, the inside of it being very smooth, greyish-white in 

 colour, and rather shiny. Then came the naked pup.\, measuring 

 exactly half-an-inch in length. Its colour was a light reddish-brown, 

 but it became darker before the emero;ence of the imago. The larva 

 was of a light yellowish-green, with a dark brown spot on each side of 

 each segment. The head and the three pairs of true legs were light 

 yellowish-red. The eggs (which I may mention were infertile, as I 

 could not get the insects to pair) were dirty white in colour and round; 

 but they dried up and so changed in shape before I had the photo- 

 graph taken. The imago needs no description, as every one knows it 

 well, but I may mention that among all those I bred there was no 

 variation, with the exception that some were a trifle darker than others, 

 and there was a little difference in size, more especially among the males. 

 The first imago emerged on June LOth, I bdi, and on that day z!6 emerged. 

 On the following day, June 1 6tli. 10 emerged ; 17th, only I ; 18th, 5 ; 

 19th, 9 ; 20th, 11; 21st, 10; 22nd, 10 ; 23rd, 8; 24th, 5; 25th, 5; 

 26th, 5 ; 27th, 5 ; 28th, 10 ; 29th, 15 ; yOth, 12 ; July 1st, 'A'S ; 2nd, 18 ; 

 3rd, 12 ; 4th, 12 ; 5th, 14 ; 6th, 4 ; 7th, 2 ; 8th, 4 ; 9th, 2 ; 10th, ; 

 nth, 1; 12th, 1; 13th, 1; 14t]i, 1; 15th to 21st (inclusive) 0; 

 22nd, 1; 23rd to 29th (inclusive) 0; 30th, 1, and that was the 

 last one. 



