so The entomologist s reoord. 



amongst the lime -fed ones. Those pupfe which were formed on the 

 surface of the ground produced more perfect insects than those Avhich 

 had gone under, a very hxrge number of moths, which had partially 

 emerged, being found when I cleared out the box last week, and a 

 number of pupa% although apparently alive, have not yet produced 

 imagines. Males, as a rule, came out first and females later, and this 

 caused a difficulty in pairing, as the males were usually dead before a 

 female appeared. My endeavour to breed is the cause of so few 

 insects being set, as after a few days their appearance was the reverse 

 of good, and they were too much knocked about to be worth setting. 

 In March, Mr. Bacot gave me several females of A. strataria, which I 

 hoped to cross, but no male A. betularia came out whilst they 

 were alive. A. letulan'a females rarely lay eggs unless they have been 

 fertilised, but A. strataria almost invariably lays, as far as I can see, 

 whether fertile or not. I noted a singular difference between the two 

 species in their manner of depositing eggs. A. strataria seems always 

 to place them in the folds of the leno and under the seams, but A. betu- 

 laria scatters them about the surface indifferently. The eggs of ^. stra- 

 taria are greener than those of A. betularia, but this may be owing to 

 their being infertile. The ovipositor of A. strataria is longer than 

 that of A. betularia, but I noted that whilst both these species deposited 

 their eggs on the inside of the leno, and with the body but little bent, 

 Biston hirtaria pushed its eggs through the meshes and into corners 

 and splits in the wood, whilst it also bent the body completely round, 

 so that the ovipositor was brought round between the legs, and some- 

 times almost level with the head. A great many insects appear to 

 have stated times of the day for coming out of the pupa. Thus I have 

 searched closely for A. strataria at Epping Forest, but never found it 

 before 4 p.m., when it was always in perfect condition ; A. betularia 

 seems to come out a little later, as I have never but twice seen it 

 emerging before 5 p.m., and on both occasions when it was found 

 earlier, viz., in the morning, it was crippled, and from the look of 

 things had been struggling for hours to get rid of the pupa case. I 

 feel that my observations have been very imperfect, and that probably 

 I have greatly wasted your time in narrating them. I should not have 

 undertaken to do so had I known that my time would have been 

 so fully occupied in other ways, or that I should have been so much 

 from home, or finally, that I should have such bad luck in getting the 

 perfect insects out ; but such as they are you have my notes before you, 

 and I can only hope that they may have been of some interest to you. 

 My prime object in feeding my larva^ on different sorts of food was to 

 see if any difference could be detected in the perfect insects, either in 

 colour or sex, the single observation that plum feeding produced 

 most males, and lime the contrary, proves little, and requires further 

 looking into, but as regards colour no difference could be detected, 

 as the males are usually darker than the females. That the variety 

 douhledayaria is becoming commoner in the North of England is, 

 I think, without doubt. At Delamere Forest, I hear, it is taken oftener 

 than the type, and it also seems certain that all insects caught in 

 the Manchester district are darker than the southern type. I never 

 collected in that district, but I lately saw a specimen of Hi/bernia 

 wanjlnaria sitting on a fence near Eccles, which I promptly boxed, as 

 it appeared to me to be darker than usual, and I have brought it up 



