18i»6.] 147 



Vaccinium vitis-idcea, making in it a long narrow gallery spreading into 

 an irregular blotch, both gallery and blotcli being pretty well filled 

 with brown f rass, and closely resembling the work of a JVepticida larva. 

 While still quite small it hibernates in its mine, but quits it early in 

 the following spring, after making for itself a case formed from an 

 elongate-oval piece cut out of the leaf. It is uncertain whether it 

 now feeds at all, but if so, only for a little while, for still in early 

 spring it attaches its case to a twig of the food -plant, or elsewhere, 

 and so remains ivithout feeding through the whole summer and winter 

 until the following spring, when with the first warm days it moves to 

 a leaf, usually fixing its case on the under-side near the stalk. The 

 larva now mines a broad gallery into the leaf, following the margin, 

 and leaving its frass in single heaps in the mine, which is not the habit 

 of any other Goleophora larva ; then when it has again reached the 

 base of the leaf, it cuts out for itself a new case, leaving the old 

 smaller one near the elongate-oval hole thus made. After moving to 

 the under-side of a fresh leaf, and attaching its case thereto, it mines 

 into it a long irregular blotch into which it advances with its whole 

 body ; henceforth, however, it no longer leaves its frass in the mine, 

 but extrudes it through the end of the case as do the other leaf-mining 

 Coleophorce. Having mined several leaves, it finally spins up for pupa- 

 tion on to a twig at the end of April, and the moth emerges about the 

 middle of May. I understand that in Scotland the dates of spinning 

 up and emergence are usually about a month later than those given by 

 Hof mann. The species is widely distributed in Germany, and recorded 

 from Norway by Dr. Wocke, and one will confidently expect to hear 

 of its being observed in other British localities besides Eannoch. 



Its peculiar natural history makes it impossible to confuse OUf- 

 zella in its previous stages with any other known Coleophora, but in 

 the imago state it is not always so easy to distinguish. Hofmann, 

 when comparing it with vacciniella and vitisella, which also feed, the 

 latter regularly, the former sometimes (teste Bofmann), on Vaccinium 

 Vitis-Idcea, points out that Glitzella is decidedly the palest, and has 

 the most strongly ochreous male, that vacciniella is darker, and the 

 contrast in it between the wing and the ochreous base of the apical 

 fringes is much more striking, while vitisella is the darkest of the 

 three. C. vacciniella is not known as British, and the distinctions 

 between British examples of the other two are by no means always so 

 noticeable as in continental ones, owing to the Rannoch Olitzella beuig 

 considerably darker than those from Germany. 



The Rectory, Corfe Castle : 

 April, 1896. 



