81 



CLOSTERA ANACHORETA. 



By the Rkv. Joseph Gkekne, M.A. 



I AM veiy anxious to once more re-open the question, " Is 

 Clostera anachoreta an indigenous British insect ? " I have never 

 thought it to be so. My last communication to ' Entomologist' 

 was in 1881, nearly seven years ago. As it is necessary to my 

 enquiry, and as probably most of your present readers know 

 little as to the particulars of its appearance in this country twenty- 

 eight years ago, I reproduce it here : " In the year 1859, Dr. 

 Knaggs announced that he had discovered eleven larvae of this, 

 till then, reputed British species. Ten pupae resulted, and eggs 

 were produced in due course. These, more or less, wei'e distri- 

 buted among various entomologists (myself included), and they 

 having, in their turn, obtained eggs, the insect was bred for some 

 years in such vast numbers as to become an absolute drug, and 

 people ceased to keep up the brood any longer. Can any of the 

 numerous readers of the 'Entomologist' inform me whether it 

 has ever been taken since then in a ' state of nature ? ' I observe 

 in the ' Zoologist ' (1863, p. 8694), a notice from Mr. Sidebotham, 

 that he had taken a larva at Folkestone, very near the place 

 where Dr. Knaggs made his discovery ; and a similar notice from 

 Mr. Meek, in the ' Ent. Mo. Mag., (i. 133). These instances are 

 all that I can discover, and they do not answer my question in the 

 way I desire, as these larvae were found in the same place as 

 Dr. Knaggs's, and the ' home-breeding ' had, perhaps, scarcely 

 fallen through" (Entom. xv. p. 117). Two, and only two, 

 replies to my question appeared in the same volume (pp. 133 — 160). 

 The latter I dismiss for the present. The first was extremely 

 interesting, and very much to the purpose. From it I make the 

 following extracts : — " In answer, &c., I send an account of my 

 own experience. In September, 1861, my father found a larva 

 feeding on poplar, in some small plantations below West Cliff, 

 Folkestone ; but I did not recognise the species till the pupa 

 hatched on April 27th, 1862. . . . This larva of C. anachoreta 

 and the subse(}uent ones of this species we found in 1862 — 3, 

 were only on this ' balsam poplar.' In the autumn of 1862 my 

 brother and I found twelve larvae ; one died when young, the 

 other eleven changed into pupae, all of which Initched in ihe 



