1872.] ^ 57 



I 8cut some eggs to Mr. Hellins, who mjinaged to bring three 

 larvae through hibernation, keeping them in a cucumber frame without 

 bottom heat ; but he bred only one moth (June 12th), the pupa state 

 having lasted four or five weeks. 



The food the larvae chose at first was cowslip, garden riband 

 grass, and Ranunculus acris ; after a time they seemed to prefer Poten- 

 filln reptans and Ranunculus repens, and on this last they fed up ; Mr. 

 Hellins tells me his larvae stuck to the riband grass throughout. 



The egg, as with other species of this genus, was small, somewhat 

 globular, but rather flattened above ; the shell glistening, with thirty 

 blunt ribs, and faint reticulations ; the colour at first dirty white, and 

 in four days there appeared a greyish-brown blotch on the apex, and 

 a zone of irregvilar blotches round the middle ; just before hatching, 

 the colour was pale grey. 



The young larvae were at first of a semi-pellucid greenish-grey 

 colour, with a brown head, and an internal brownish-green vessel, all the 

 usual warts very conspicuous, and bearing each a bristle. In ten days 

 they had moulted into opaque, brownish-grey coats, having a stripe of 

 cream colour above the legs : at their next moult, when from three to 

 four lines long, they were of similar colour, the dorsal and sub-dorsal 

 lines becoming faintly visible, the former as a pale thi-ead running 

 down the centre of a brown stripe, the latter as a fine line rather paler 

 than the ground, and edged above with a thread of darker ; the lower 

 stripe above the legs much paler than the ground colour. In three 

 weeks more they were five lines in length, and stouter in proportion 

 than before, and now showed the dorsal stripe white running uninter- 

 ruptedly through oval shapes of brownish-grey, darker than the ground 

 colour, the sub-dorsal stripe as before, and the pale sub-spiracular 

 stripe having a fine line of white on its upper edge. These details, 

 even at this early stage, effectually distinguish this species from either 

 of its congeners. Another week of growth brought them up to five- 

 eighths of an inch in length, and they w^ere now generally of a little 

 deeper tint of greyish-brown, the dorsal white stripe still the distinct 

 character, running now through elongated diamond shapes, darker 

 than the ground colour ; the sub-dorsal stripe a little less white, with 

 a series of oblong black dashes along its upper margin ; just before 

 the last moult the whitish stripes assumed an ochreous-yellow tint, 

 and the whole ornamentation generally came very near to the appear- 

 alice of the full-grown stage — now to be described. 



The full-grown larva is 1^ to If inches in length, of stout propor- 

 tions, cylindrical, and of tolerably uniform bulk thi'oughout, tapering 



