SOCIETIES. 69 



the French races were white, were brown in the English larvae. The 

 white sub-dorsil. line, and the remnants of the oblique stripes, were 

 also stronger in the English forms, and there were traces in some 

 larvffi, strongly developed, of a blue line or band just above the sub- 

 dorsal line, probably a remnant of the blue stripes that are well 

 developed in B. trifoUi and (JlUioauiipa nemtria, and slightly less so in 

 L\ castrensia. The English (jiicrciis, Mr. Bacot took to be the older form, 

 the French qiwirux occasionally having faint traces of the blue, coming 

 between it and spartu, which was more constant, and tended to approach 

 B. rubi in the loss of these markings. Mr. Warburg had also verv 

 kindly given Mr. Bacot a few larvae, the result of a pairing between 

 a <? quereih (French) and a $ spartii. The larvae were now in about 

 the 4th stage ; 4 of them had the white quercus coat, 6 the red coloured 

 fur of spartii. Ox a fixed hybernating stage in larv.'E of Orgyia 

 GONosTiGMA. — Mr. Bacot said that he had placed some larvae of 

 Onpjia ifnn(>sti(/iiia, which had passed the usual hybernating stage 

 before the food supply failed, in a cold room, to see if they would 

 hybernate. They attempted to do so, fastening themselves in one 

 position, which they occupied through October, November, and most 

 of December. But they had subsequently died, being unable 

 apparently to stand the recent cold, which had had no ill effects on larvre 

 hybernating in their normal stage. European and American 

 Catocalids. — Mr. Dadd exhibited Catocala fraxini from Germany, 

 C mipta from Wood Green, C. sponm and C. promissa from the New 

 Forest, and C. pacta, C. luciana and C. concumbens from Dakota, 

 U.S.A. Hybrid Zyg^enid^. — Mr. Tutt then exhibited some hybrid 

 Zyg^nides, and read the following notes : — " It is in the memory of 

 you all that Mr. W. H. B. Fletcher has bred hybrids between 

 Z. loniccrac and Z . jilipemlulae , and between Z. hniicrrae and Z. trifolii 

 (the progeny of the latter proving fertile for four generations). In my 

 pamphlet, 'Notes on the Zygsenidse,' I described fully two very distinct 

 Zygienids, which had been united by Staudinger under the name of 

 Z. trifolii var. clubia. These were Zijyaena medicat/inis, SbudZ, ochsen- 

 heimeri, Zell., the former a five-spotted species, closely related to, but 

 larger than Z. lonicerae, the latter a six-spotted species, closely allied 

 to Z. jilipendulae , aberrations of which have been erroneously referred 

 to this species. Whilst we were at Courmayeur (Piedmont), in 1894, 

 Dr. Chapman sent eggs of Z. ochsenheimeri to Mr. W. H. B. Fletcher. 

 These duly hatched, and when the imagines emerged a $ ucJisini/wiiiwri 

 was paired with a ^ filipmdnlae from the Sussex Downs (Lewes or 

 Shoreham). Eggs were obtained, and a part of the moths resulting 

 by the cross I now exhibit. Mr. Fletcher adds that the hybrids (or 

 mongrels) paired inter se, and the larvae duly hatched. You will 

 observe that the true Z. ochsenlu-imeri shows considerable sexual 

 dimorphism, the male being smaller than the female, the sixth spot 

 (or lower of the outer pair of spots) being almost obsolete, with a 

 distinct concavity on the outer margin of the hind-wing, which is 

 largely ascentuated by the widening of the rather broad black margin 

 at this area. The females show the same peculiarities, but less 

 markedly than the males. You will also notice that the males of the 

 cross exhibit very markedly the characters of the male of ochsenheimeri, 

 the sixth spot, in all but two of the male specimens, being much 

 reduced, and in a majority of the specimens the hind-wing is like that 

 of ochsenheimeri. On the other band, the females, with two exceptions, 



