46 THE ENT0M0L0GI8T. 



Anticlea cucullata, and heptomcris strigilaria, ova of which Dr. 

 Chapman sent me from Guethary (Basses-Pyrenees) this summer. 

 Mr. Barrett says that the larva of L. immorata, another of the 

 long, thin, rigid species, "if touched, coils up almost like a watch- 

 spring." Mr. Bacot reports on the larva of L. incanata — a con- 

 tinental species, not occurring in Britain, hut related to our 

 marginepunctata — that " They rest either in an extended position 

 or with a partial double spiral coil." I have also noticed these 

 singular coils in others of the slender group of larvae — L. 

 imitaria, &c. The stout species, which cannot actually coil 

 themselves, like to rest in slightly curved positions or sometimes 

 quite straight, and when disturbed bend the front segments in to 

 meet or approach the under side of the hinder, making a form 

 which may very roughly be likened to a figure 2 ; whereas the 

 thin larvae, in making the " spiral," of course have to bring the 

 front segments round beside the hinder. 



To give, in a paper like the present, the technicalities of the 

 larval descriptions which Mr. Bacot has kindly prepared on 

 Leptomeris incanata, Ptychopoda trigeminata, and a Pyrenean 

 species P. asellaria, would serve no useful purpose ; we shall 

 hope to make scientific use of them when a larger number of 

 species have been studied in the same thorough way. I have 

 myself, in addition, some fairly full notes on certain stages 

 of the larvae of P. virgidaria and L. strigaria, made four or five 

 years ago, and some on the newly-hatched larva of P. trigemi- 

 nata; and these furnish a few further details of value for our 

 studies, as do also some very good notes on the earliest stages of 

 L. emutaria by Mr. A. Sich (Ent. xxxvii. p. 108). I will only now 

 mention one or two general points. 



So far as I know personally, all the Acidaliid larvae are, on 

 first hatching, distinctly slender in proportion to their length, 

 though probably in somewhat varying degree. I learn from 

 Van Leeuwen's account in Sepp's 'Nederlandsche Insecten,' that 

 those of P. humiliata and P. interjectaria are stouter than most. 

 I find from my notes that P. trigeminata, which becomes decidedly 

 one of the stumpy ones in its later stages, is slender at first, and 

 so is P. virgidaria, which is of medium proportions when full 

 grown, as well as such larvae as L. strigilaria, strigaria, &c, 

 which remain slender to the last. The arrangement of the 

 tubercles would seem to be fairly constant. The setae furnish 

 some interesting structures, and I fancy will yield material of 

 some classificatory value. Sometimes they are fairly normal, 

 short, stiff hairs, often they are thickened or clubbed at the 

 extremity, sometimes thickened throughout, sometimes (as in 

 newly-hatched P. trigeminata, or in P. asellaria, up to the very 

 last) they begin thickening rapidly almost from the base, and 

 make either a flask-shaped structure or something approaching 

 an inverted pyramid. I suspect that some of these last-named 



