EUPITHECIA TAMARISCIATA AS A BRITISH INSECT. 103 



the writer. He lived in an entomological muddle and worry, as 

 hundreds of his letters to us show, indeed, the notes are strongly 

 suggestive of "Box and Cox," and I feel satisfied that Mr. J. Gardner 

 would rather confirm on the field his previous recollections than wish 

 that any really important issue should, even in part, be settled on the 

 scanty information at present available. 



But all this is negative and carries us nowhere. My object in 

 writing is to protest against Mr. Prout's concluding paragraph giving 

 his opinion of mj' share in the matter. He writes {Ivnt., xli., p. 53) : 



As to the E. tamarisciata (?) bred by Mr. E. M. Holmes, F.L S., from North 

 Cornwall (Eiit. Bee, xviii., p. 158), Mr. Holmes tells me he was unaware that 

 Mr. Tutt intended to publish a reference to it, and it was perhaps a little 

 premature, as Mr. Tutt had not seen the larvEe, and evidently only determined the 

 species by the foodplant. Mr. Holmes has very kindly submitted his material to 

 my inspection, but as he will no doubt write upon it when further elucidation has 

 been obtainable, I shall not forestall him further than to say that I quite agree 

 with him that his larvse did not tally with the only definitely known form of 

 taniarisciiita, but much rather with fraxinata, and that for the present I would 

 not venture to locate the imagines ; of course, they belong to this group (or species, 

 if Staudinger is right). 



I would ask why I should fall under the strictures of my friend, 

 Mr. Prout. First and foremost the facts are as follows : — 



(1.) ^Ir. Holmes is a well-known botanist ; his wife collects 

 lepidoptera. Mr. Holmes brought two imagines and a drawing of 

 the larva of an Kupithecia to the Natural History Museum, to 

 compare with the material in the National Collection, and submitted 

 the material to Sir G. Hampson. 



(2.) As I happened to be at work at the Museum, Sir George 

 Hampson shoAved the examples and referred the matter to me, and I 

 immediately located them to the group to which they belonged, 

 I compared them with the material in the collection, and it was clear 

 they were tamarisciata. 



(3.) Mr. Holmes informed me that his wife bred them, not himself, 

 that he was not a lepidopterist, that some of the iDupse were still 

 unemerged, etc. He informed me that they had been reared from 

 tamarisk, and this confirmed my reference. 



(4.) I then turned up Staudinger's (Jatalo//, looked through the 

 references, and noted what Freyer, Guenee, and others said about it. 

 I also looked up the figures and references to other tamarisk-feeding 

 pugs to see what was known. I spent, perhaps, almost an hour 

 on the subject and when the proof of a short paper on Eupithecia 

 fraxinata and K. innotata came back to me from the printer a few days 

 later, I added the note quoted [antca, p. 102). At the present moment 

 the two following facts stand out clearly : — 



(1.) Specimens bred from larvje found on tamarisk by Mr. Holmes. 



(2.) Agree exactly with the long series of specimens labelled 

 tamarisciata in the National collection. 



Mr. Prout agrees that they belong to the group (or species) 

 fraxinata + innotata -\- tamarisciata, yet would " not venture to locate 

 the imagines." He also states that Mr. Holmes' larvae " did 7iot tally 

 with the only definitely-known form of tamarisciata'' (no doubt the 

 picture I turned up for Mr. Holmes when I went into the matter) " but 

 much rather with fraxinata," which, in species with variable larvje 



