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SOME EXPERIMENTS ON THE REGENERATION OF 

 THE LEGS OF LIPARIS DISPAR L. (LEPIDOPTERA). 



By T. A. Chapman, M.D., Reigate. 

 (Plates XVI— XXV.) 



My object in the first instance was to determine which larval 

 joints in the legs corresponded to those of the imago, and it 

 soon was obvious that the basal plates represented the coxa 

 and trochanter, whilst the three marked divisions of the larval 

 leg were femur, tibia, and tarsus. 



It became also obvious that complete regeneration could 

 not take place in one moult, but that several were necessary 

 to complete regeneration, and that this was not really complete, 

 if size were taken into consideration, unless the moults were 

 numerous. 



This must, however, be taken as referring to the chief subject 

 of my experiments, Liparis dispar, as in Agrotis prónuba the 

 process was much more rapid. 



The wounds made in the experiments never seemed to take 

 on any septic action, except in a few cases, when the larx'ie were 

 kept too damp, when the crust over the wound became mouldy 

 and the larva; died. Nevertheless, the crust did not always 

 seem to be a mere superficial crust, but seemed to in\'olve some 

 of the tissues, possibly due to too dry an atmosphere ; but the 

 result was that the lost parts seemed sometimes to amount 

 to more than were actually amputated. 



My first experiments were made more than a dozen years 

 ago, and I have made others since, and I ha\e some four hundred 

 preparations of the same character as the selection from them 

 presented in the photographs. 



Damage, generally amputation, was done to one leg of a 

 larva, one of the third pair being selected, in order that anv 

 malformation of the pupal integument should not interfere 

 with the final rearing of the specimen. I found later that this 

 precaution was unnecessary, and that one of the first or second 



