128 [June, 



sculpture, light red-brown, the eyes and dorsal segments rather darker ; cremaster 

 hardly noticeable, except for a small tuft of fine bristles]. 



Achcea Lienardi. — "I have another thing which will, I think, be of interest — 

 the smaller kind of fruit destroyer with its chrysalis and a drawing of its larva. 

 The food plant is rose; this is what we found the larvae upon, but they also ate 

 mimosa." 



[The larva as figured is elongated and in form much like tliose of the Catocalce. 

 The head very round, brown edged with black ; body dull umbreous with an 

 angulated black spot on the fifth segment, and two black-brown pointed humps on 

 the twelfth ; anal segment tipped with black ; and a black stripe runs along the 

 whole under-surface in the middle ; legs brown. The younger larva is blacker, more 

 slender, and the humps on the twelfth segment are in proportion larger. Pupa 

 rather long, tapering regularly off behind, more like that of a large Geometra than a 

 Noctua, smooth and with only minute dotted sculpture on the abdominal segments ; 

 anal segment longitudinally ribbed and wrinkled in a very singular manner; 

 cremaster only a small bundle of tiny hooked bristles ; whole surface purple-red 

 covered with a fine thin whitish bloom. In a slight silken cocoon among its food]. 



Some further information being asked for with reference to tlie fruit destroying 

 habits of this and other species, calling attention to Mr. G. A. K. Marshall's note 

 (Ent. Mo. Mag., 2nd series, vol. ii, p. 207) — 



" I did not reply to your enquiry about the fruit'motb. I feel certain that it 

 pierces the figs, there being a fine pin-prick spot where it has been sucking, and 

 also that it damages the peaches. They do not all have maggots, though many do, 

 doubtless produced by flies. I kept some of the pierced peaches for a considerable 

 time to see what came of it, but could find no proceeds. I cannot prove anything, 

 so will let the matter drop for the present, only it is a settled conviction out here 

 that the fruit is damaged by moths, and I think with sound reason. This last 

 season we had the smaller fruit-moth (A. Lienardi) in such multitudes that they 

 sprung up all along, as one walked among the bushes or shook a tree ; and they 

 settled so thickly upon the peaches before they were fully ripe, even by daylight, 

 that one could go and pick out the scarcer varieties, this being one of the most 

 variable of moths. At the same time we could scarcely find a sound peach ; the 

 crop was quite a failure. The large fruit-moths ( ' SpMngomorpha chlorea) come at 

 night, and smaller species without number ; also wasps, flies and beetles in the 

 daytime ; but it was the lesser fruit-moths (A. Lienardi) that were the chief raiders 

 this season. Sometimes one side of a fig becomes porous like a sponge, as if all the 

 moisture were sucked away. Do not imagine that it annoys me to be contradicted. 

 I only want the truth, and fuller knowledge. I know far too little to be an 

 authority." 



Two months later. — "We had a visitor the other day — a lady who has told me 

 many interesting things about insects which she has noticed in going about the 

 Colony. I was asking her about the fruit moth, she having told me before of the 

 clouds and flocks of them which she had come across in the open veldt. I asked 

 her whether she was sure that they damaged the fruit, suggesting flies as the 

 possible depredators, or at any rate as the beginners of the mischief. She said she 

 was perfectly sure that the moths did it, and instanced that they had some par- 



