1873.] 1(JB 



a neat little chamber, smoothly lined with wliite silk, and covered outside with 

 particles of gnawed grass : though I had rudely torn it open, yet it set to work 

 immediately to repair the damage, and by the next day had completed a cocoon of 

 some toughness. The moth, a very fine one, appeared on the 22nd of July. 



The egg of pinetellus is of elliptical shape, and under an ordinary pocket lens 

 appears smooth ; at first it is of a pale flesh colour, deepening in tint by degrees, 

 and turning in eight days to blood-red, and in six days more to a dingy purple, just 

 previous to hatching. 



The newly hatched larva is of a drab colour, with a blackish head. In early 

 spring it is very dark, but differs from the adult larva in size only. 



My larva which reached full growth was five-eighths of an inch in length, 

 moderately slender, cylindrical, almost uniform in size throughout ; the skin, of 

 a dingy reddish slate colour, was smooth but nob shining ; the head, the plates on 

 the second and on the thirteenth segments, and all the tubercular spots, were jot 

 black and very highly polished, each spot being furnished with a fine blackish hair ; 

 the spots on the third and fourth segments transversely oval in front and fusiform 

 behind ; on the other segments the anterior pairs of dorsal spots were squarish, and 

 larger than the hinder pairs, which were somewhat transversely linear, the spiracles 

 small, circular and black. 



The pupa skin is about three-eighths of an inch in length, moderately stout, the 

 wing-cases long in proportion ; the skin smooth and polished, and of a cinnamon- 

 brown colour. — WiiLiAii BuoKLEE, Emsworth : October Qth, 1873. 



Mode of egg-laying of Agrion. — Mr. Q-. W. Dunn writes us that while collecting 

 at Santa Cruz, California, he observed a species of Agrion (as we find the insect to 

 be) " flying about the water united male and female. The female would liglit on a 

 " spear of grass gi-owing in the water, the male would then let go, and the female go 

 " down the grass twelve or fifteen inches under the water and deposit her eggs." — 

 Extracted from the ' American Naturalist ' for 1873, p. 498. 



[This is additional confirmatory evidence (though none is needed) of a curious 

 habit several times already recorded, but which I have never myself been so fortunate 

 as to observe. Probably the earliest account of this habit is to be found in the pub- 

 lished proceedings of the Entomological Society of London (Tr. Ent. Soc., Vol. i, 

 proc. p. Ixxxii) for the meeting held on the 7th December, 1835, when a paper was 

 read by Mr. E. Patterson, of Belfast, under the title ' Notes relative to the Natural 

 History of the Dragon-fly.' Mr. Patterson stated that Mr. B. J. Clarke, of Portar- 

 lington, had observed AgrionidcB coupled alighting upon aquatic plants, the male 

 flying away and the female descending into the water, remaining there some tune. 

 This account seems to have been reproduced by Mr. Patterson in his ' Natural History 

 of the Insects mentioned by Shakespeare ' (1842), and is further alluded to by Evans 

 in his ' British Libellulinse,' and by Dr. Hagen in the ' Eevue des Odonates,' p. 348 

 (foot-note). After Mr. Clarke, a similar habit was noticed by von Siebold in Lesies, 

 and since then by several observers, one of the latest being Mr. Jenner Weir, as 

 recorded in the Proc. Ent. Soc. 1871, p. xxxix.— E. McLachlan.] 



Second note on the Trichoplera of Zetterstedt^s " Insecta Lappoiiica," according 

 to Wallengren's determinations. —At p. 281 of vol. vii of this Magazine I gave notes 



