18flfi.l 41 
confmemeut : oiliers uot naturally caunibalistic (at least 1 suppose uot), would 
appear to assume the habit in captivity, as the account of that of Thecla qucrcus coolly 
demolishing the pupa of his more advanced brother seems to indicate. A weather 
eye must be kept open for such customers, and their propensities circumvented. 
Then, again, nothing is more common with careless breeders than for the 
peaceable hawk-moths, " kittens," and other larva3, when kept on short commons, 
to nibble off the caudal appendages of their relatives, an operation which I am by 
no means sure does not originate in their erroneously considering these excrescences 
to be of a vegetable character. 
What a blessing to the slovenly would such larvsD as those of Qlottula pancratii 
be! M. Milliere thus quotes from a letter of his friend M. Uaube :— They eat the 
leaves of the Pancratium, then the flowers, the seeds (if not too forward), and the 
root, which they attack in the last place ; and when they have demolished the bulb, 
which they void just as if it had been ground up by their powerful mandibles, they 
eat their frass ; and curious to tell, those which are nourished after this strange 
fashion, undergo their transformations quite as well, and produce imagos quite as 
fine, as the others ! ! It is, the only larva which has this peculiarity." I fear that 
M. Daube is quite right in his latter supposition : at least, no such contented and 
utilitarian larva has yet been detected in Great Britain. 
{To he continued.) 
On the similarity of the insects of North America and of England. — On receiving 
lately a box of Lepidopterous insects from an entomological friend in Quebec, 
it was impossible to help being struck at the first glance with the great 
similarity between them and our British species. Sixty-six species were sent to 
me (the only selection being that when an insect was known by my friend to be 
English it was excluded) ; of these no less than ten may be classed as decidedly 
common to the two countries. These were Vanessa Antiopa, Chrysophanus Americana 
(C. Phloeas), Deilephila chamcenerii (D. galii), Smerinthus excaecatus (I think, without 
doubt, ocellatus), Hydroecia nicUtans, Mamestra adjuncta (M.hrassicce'), Agrotis tritici 
Scoliopteryx lihatrix, Melanippe liastata, and Scotosia undulata. On the other hand, 
there were eighteen only without any English generic ally : and in making this last 
selection a rigid exclusiveness has been observed : thus, Danais Archippus, Limenitis 
Disiphus, two species of Neonymphai, and three Saturnice (lo, Polyphemus and 
Cecropia), are amongst the eighteen, as also are Ellopia ribea/ria, Zerene catenaria, 
and Cidaria diversilineata, as these three last-named scarcely seem to belong to the 
genera to which they are referred. The remaining thirty-eight are generically 
related to our native species, and in many instances the approximation is so close 
as to suggest specific identity also. 
It is the business of entomologists to deal with facts, and not with hypotheses, 
yet the question of how are wa to account for this similarity will obtrude itself upon 
our minds. Natui'alization will account for some part of it, certainly: and the 
history of this in Pieris rapm has been most admirably traced out by the friend to 
whom I am indebted for the very specimens now under discussion, Mr. Bowles ; 
thus the Vanessa and Scoliopteryx may be brought over whilst in their winter sleep, 
and awake in a new country, there to deposit their eggs, but hastaia and undulata 
