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SOME QUERIES CONCERNINa BRITISH MICRO-LEPIDOPTERA, 

 LEFT UNANSWERED BY THE LATE MONS. RAGONOT. 



BT CHAS. G. BARRETT, F.E.S. 



The untimely decease of that most careful and painstaking 

 Trench Entomologist, M. E. L. Eagonot, has deprived us— among far 

 larger matters — of a hoped-for explanation of some rather perplexing 

 statements in a paper by him, communicated to the " Anuales " of the 

 Eiitomological Society of France, 1891, pp. 161 — 226. Among a vast 

 amount of information of great value on very many species, the 

 following, more doubtful, statements occur: — 



" Ablabia osseana, Sc. (pratana), p. 184. — I possess several examples called 

 stehnana by Milliere. He figured a brown larva as that of osseana ; but this insect 

 has been reared by M. Joaniiis, in England, from a yellowish-green larva — often pale 

 yellow — with a pale dorsal line and a more obscure subdorsal stripe on each side. 

 The body beneatli is of the colour of the dorsal line. The head is of a reddish- 

 yellow, and on each side of the following segment is a reddish spot. The larva is 

 thickest in the middle, and attenuated at each end, the head narrower than the body. 



" It lives about the middle of June in the flowers of Chrysanthemum leiican- 

 themuni, of which it draws together the petals, feeding on the florets of the 

 receptacle. The moth appears at the beginning of July." 



"Cheimatophila toetricella, Hlib. {hyemella, Tr.), p. 185. — M. I'Abbe L. 

 de Joannis has communicated to me a description of the larva, which he has 

 discovered. This larva has six feet ; it is brown, paler beneath, marked with three 

 very slender dorsal lines ; head fulvous. It lives in May and June on oak under- 

 neath a silken covering, which envelopes, gradually, the extremity of a branch, 

 sometimes enclosing many leaves, which the larva draws together, forming a gallery 

 thi'ough them ; living in it in small colonies. The cocoon is of a thin texture, and 

 is placed in the interior of the habitation ; the larva remains in it long unchanged, 

 and reaches the imago state in the beginning of March." 



" Grapholitha Zebeana, Rtz. — M. I'Abbe' L. de Joannis has submitted to me 

 a specimen taken at Canterbury on the 7th June." 



With regard to these three statements I wrote to my old corres- 

 pondent, M. E-agonot. Unfortunately, from the incessant pressure 

 of other matters, I delayed doing so for many months, but I did vrrite 

 at last, and was patiently awaiting a reply when the lamentable news 

 of his death arrived. Now it gives me real pain to bring up these 

 instances of apparent mistakes for investigation, which yet — in view 

 of the known vitality of error — seems necessary. 



Ahlahia pratana (osseana) is one of our most abundant moths. 

 On chalk hills, on rough pastures, in marshy meadows, on hill-sides, 

 wherever is extensive waste ground, from our south coasts to the 

 Shetlands, it may reasonably be looked for ; in most of them it will 



