148 [December, 



a slight web ; when larger, it becomes of a more yellowish-white, and 

 burrows into the substance o£ the root, hollowing it out and killing the 

 plant. The favourite place of pupation in the case of healthy larva?, 

 appears to be the upper end of the hollowed root, close under the dead 

 crown, through which the light brown pupa is pushed when the moth 

 emerges. 



I am not aware that the larva of this species has before been 

 noticed, but I am inclined to suspect that it feeds also on the roots of 

 allied plants, for I remember once finding both sexes in abundance in 

 a field at Norwich, in which some composite plant, which I did not 

 recognize (probably Crepis or Borklimisia), was growing in plenty. 

 The moths, the females especially, constantly settled upon these plants, 

 and I have no doubt that as larvae they had fed in the roots. 



Ortliotcenia antiqimna, Hiibner. — I think that I have already 

 recorded finding this species with O. ericetana, Westw. (trifoliana, 

 H.-S.), and Euchromia purpurana, commonly in some of the clover 

 fields here. The larvse of the last two species being quite unknown 

 (for Moschler's record of ericetana "on aspen," is obviously incredible), 

 I took the opportunity, when one of these fields was ploughed up in 

 February, of examining every root that I could find exposed by the 

 plough. Scattered commonly over the field were pieces of what might 

 be called long thin tuber, rather than root, since they were fleshy and 

 brittle, without internal fibre, and totally devoid of fibrous roots or 

 attachment to any kind of stem. They were of about the thickness of 

 a goose quill, eight or ten inches long, rounded off at the ends, and 

 regularly constricted at about every inch of their length. These roots 

 (or tubers) were quite strange to me, but I soon found that many of 

 them were tenanted by a slender larva which moved rapidly up and 

 down a burrow exactly in the middle of the root, and extending to 

 nearly its entire length. The burrow of a young larva was small and 

 regular in width, but when larger they hollowed out one end of the 

 root and caused it partially to decay. I collected a lot of these roots 

 and laid them with mould in a large garden-pot tied down with gauze. 

 In the spring these roots or tubers sent down plenty of fibrous roots 

 into the earth, and threw up shoots which soon declared themselves to be 

 Stacliys arvensis, and made the identity of the larvse pretty certain. 

 They fed up entirely in the roots — apparently without affecting the 

 vitality of the plants— and were full-fed about June 10th, when they 

 deserted the roots to spin up in moss, hollow sticks, rolled paper, 

 between a leaf and the side of the pot, anywhere in fact that was dry 

 and convenient, and on June 28th, the first specimen of antiquana 

 emerged, others appearing for more than a fortnight afterwards. 



