104 [October, 



ON A SPECIES OF THE FAMILY GELECRIDM, HITHEETO 

 UNRECOGNISED IN ENGLAND. 



BY WILLIAM AVARREN, F.E.S. 



In the summer o£ 1858, Mr. Bond took in Wicken Fen some 

 specimens of a brownish, narrow-winged OelecTiia, which I found 

 placed in his cabinet as arundinetella. Among them there was, in 

 fiict, a single specimen of this latter insect, also caught at AVicken ; 

 which, being in very good condition, and almost as dark as the others, 

 had, no doubt, led to the confusion of the two species. Mr. Bond 

 kindly gave me a type of the insect: this was in the spring of 1886. 

 During that summer Mr. W. Farren, of Cambridge, worked Wicken 

 Fen pretty thoroughly, and among the Micros captured there by him 

 T detected, in the autumn, several examples of the species taken by 

 Mr. Bond so many years before. Mr. Farren had passed them over, 

 and even sent some away as morosa. I have also heard from Mr. 

 Fletcher, of Worthing, that he possesses a pair of a Oelechia, taken 

 a few years ago in Wicken Fen, which he marked ? n. sp., intermediate 

 between acuminatella and morosa. This summer more have been taken 

 by Mr. Albert Houghton, and I have thus been enabled to identify 

 the species as Dorypliora qucestionella, H.-S., a rather indistinct, 

 obscure-looking insect, allied to morosa, Miihl, but with hrownish- 

 black, not hluish-hlvick, and more elongate, fore-wings. The species 

 is figured by Herrich-SchiifEer, vol. v, fig. 587, and may be described as 

 follows : — 



F. w. brownish-black, elongate, of equal widtli throughout, with the apex 

 rounded ; the three dots only just perceptible ; from the costa before the apex a 

 small pale dash runs obliquely outwards towards the hind-margin, as in arundi- 

 netella, and, much more conspicuously, in Cleodora cytisella: but this pale dash is 

 not always perceptible ; the hind tibifB are conspicuously ochreous. 



Heinemann gives Zurich as the only locality for the insect, and 

 Loius corniculatus as its food-plant ; but it is worth mentioning that 

 Prof. Frey, of Zurich, who once bred the species from an unobserved 

 larva, does not name any food-plant. The imago appears during the 

 latter half of July and the beginning of August, and is caught flying 

 round flowers before dusk, and taken at light afterwards. Mr. 

 Stainton considers it to be closely allied to arundinetella. 



It may be well to correct here a slight error which .appears in 

 Heinemann's account of the food-plants of morosa. He gives both 

 Lysimachia vulgaris and Lythrum salicaria. This is wrong : the larvae 

 that feed in the Lythrum are those of suhdecnrtclla. The larvae of 

 the two species are much alike, and feed in similar ways, mining 

 down the young central shoots. 



Merton Cottage, Cambridge, 



Septeinler Vith, 1887- 



