issi. 153 



hardly perceptible; spots large, shining, and prominent, slightly darker 

 than the body, but apparently without hairs ; head and dorsal plate 

 shining jet-black ; anal plate light brown ; anterior feet black. Very 

 little change in colour during growth until full-fed, when the reddish 

 tinge was sometimes assumed. Feeding inside the unripe berries of 

 ffliamniis frangula, hollowing out the hard seeds as well as eating the 

 pulp, and, when one berry was exhausted, fastening it to another with 

 white silk, the same operations being continued until several berries 

 were united together and their contents eaten ; but the first emptied 

 berry being used as the habitation, and frass extruded through a hole 

 in it. Sometimes the berries were also strongly joined to dead or 

 living leaves, which, however, were not eaten. These larvae seem to 

 have fed through July, since some were full grown on the 29th, while 

 others continued to feed until the middle of August. They were not 

 supplied with dead leaves, other than the drying Bhamnus leaves, and, 

 when full-fed, they left the bunches of berries and rolled up portions 

 of these leaves into cylinders, cutting off portions of these cylinders 

 to form cases. These cases were roughly formed, and the edges not 

 carefully joined ; but the larvae carried them about until they settled 

 down on the sides of the pots or the gauze covers for hibernation. 

 Great care was taken to afford them as natural a condition for passing 

 the winter as was possible, but the result was very meagre, only two 

 specimens survived the winter, and emerged in the following spring. 

 The cold was unusually intense, and nearly all my hibernating Tortrix 

 larva? perished. The difficulty of wintering them is always very great. 

 I could not find that any other larvae in the cases entered the pupa 

 state. 



It does not, however, seem certain that the larva of ambiguella 

 always follows the general rule among this group of Tortrices, of hiber- 

 nating in the larva state. Mr. Fletcher's subsequent observations on 

 this point are of so great interest, that I venture to quote them 

 verbatim : 



" I spent March 3rd to 10th, 1880, in the New Forest, partly that 

 I might search stems of Bhamnus frangula ; when so doing, I found a 

 few cases w T hich afterwards yielded the moth in question : one of these 

 cases I opened to see if the tenant were Lepidopterous, this case cer- 

 tainly contained a larva. I took several more cases in the autumn of 

 1880, and opened six or seven ; all these contained pupce. A local 

 collector also called my attention to these pupae, because I had told 

 him the larva did not change till the spring. These are the ' facts of 

 the case,' so far as they have come under my eye. I can only guess 



