226 [October, 



black, the head is black or dull blue-blaqk, when magnified, with cell tessel- 

 lations, each cell with blacker centre and numerous fine short white hairs 

 arising from the angles of the tessellations. 



AVhen disturbed enough the larva curls up, not in a coil like Trichiosoma, 

 but with head and tail together, and falls. 



The larva of Rhadinoceraea micans is 23 mm. long, 2*6 thick, uniformly 

 so throughout. The colour is a pale ochreous, over-tinted with darker to 

 alinost leaden colour, least pronounced on segments 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, in which 

 the general translucency, not assertive on the darker areas, is more pronounced. 

 At spiracular level is a very narrow pale line, really the tracheal tube shining 

 through, beneath which the colour is of a decidedly much paler tint than that 

 of the upper surface, though in some specimens 8, 9, and 10 are as pale above. 

 The dorsal vessel above shows darker, owing to intestinal contents below it. 

 Above the tracheal line is a broad darker band reaching up to the subdorsal 

 spots, darker actually, but looking even darker owing "to being without the 

 white spots. These spots consist (on abdominal segments) of two dorsal spots 

 (on each side) on the 1st and 3rd subsegments, and below each of these on the 

 same subsegments, two others ; there are also two behind each spiracle and at 

 about the same level. The dorsal pair are always present, but of the two 

 below each, one or other is often absent on one or more subsegments, but 

 never both. Of six specimens noted in this matter not one had all the rows 

 complete and one was six spots short, and one specimen had no spots on one 

 side of pro- and mesothorax. On the prothorax there are usually four spots 

 on a rather oblique line ; the meso- and metathorax are much like the 

 abdominal segments, except that the third spot is rarely present, and there are 

 one or two lower spots, one of which aligns with the post-spiracular one 

 and the other is not strictly with the abdominal ones. The white spots 

 are prominences of shining white or almost colourless matei'ial, narrow and 

 flattened from before backwards, and highest, though hardly pointed at the 

 centre. Their surface is in fine raised rounded dots, essentially the same 

 as the shagreened points of the general surface. The subsegmentation is 

 practically identical with that of Phymatocera aterrima. The head is 

 rounded, black, smooth, and shining, with cell tessellations, which have 

 duller black points at some of the angles. There ai-e no hairs, unless 

 microscopic representative points be so considered. 



The spiracles are vertical slits, each with a plate in front and behind, a 

 little darker than the general surface, and broader below than above. The 

 spiracles in P. aterrima are almost identical. 



The skin surface instead of being covered with skin-points, as in 

 P. aterrima, is smooth, with a tine tessellation of smooth flat plates. 



These descriptions refer to the larvae in their last feeding instars, but each 

 species proceeds to another instar in which it does not feed, in which it is 

 smaller, having no contents to the alimentarj' canal. In one the black points 

 and in the other the white spots are practically lost, and the colours are more 

 dull and uniform. In R. micans the white dots are represented by a similar 

 set of minute plates as in the preceding skin, but hardly raised above the 

 general surface, and of about the same colour ; the surrounding skin-plates 

 however, form a border or frame, as in the fully developed spots. The head is 



