THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 131 



but as its habitat had been destroyed I had given up, after 

 several years' search, all hope of again seeing it. However, 

 accident revealed what careful search had failed to discover. In 

 the autumn of 1872 I had rambled several miles from home, 

 and was sitting down boiling my tea with the help of a spirit- 

 lamp, when at my feet and around me I discovered the dried 

 capsules of my old friend in a new locality, and many of them 

 bore unmistakable signs of having been eaten out by some 

 Lepidopterous larva. After 1 had enjoyed my tea I set to 

 work pupa-digging, but without success, so was reluctantly 

 obliged to abandon the search until last summer (1873), 

 when I again made a pilgrimage to the locality, and then 

 had the good fortune to find the plants in flower, and to 

 collect from them several larva?, some of which I knew to be 

 the larvae of Dianthoecia carpophaga; the others were unknown 

 to me. I succeeded in rearing from them several healthy 

 pupaj late in the year : these 1 have kept in a warm room, 

 and last autumn one specimen of D. carpophaga emerged, 

 and two others the beginning of April, and on the 28th of the 

 same month a fine specimen of D. albimacula made its appear- 

 ance. This morning I had the pleasure of seeing the second 

 specimen drying its wings. 1 do not care to make the 

 locality public until I find how its food-plant is distributed, 

 as an eager collector might, so far as I can see at present, 

 clear the whole of the plants in the course of one visit, and I 

 should not like to see it served as some of my hunting- 

 grounds have been by ruthless hands. When young the 

 caterpillar conceals itself in the seed-capsule, and, as it grows 

 older, at the root of the plant, crawling up after the sun has 

 set, to feed on the unripe seeds. When full-fed it is about 

 one inch and a quarter, long, tapering slightly towards each 

 end. The head is smaller than the 2nd segment, pale brown 

 in colour, with four darker lines down the face ; the colour of 

 the body is pale ochreous-yellow, inclining to brownish 

 yellow on the anterior segments. The points of a series of 

 dark brown triangular marks Ibrra the dorsal Hue, and the 

 legs of each triangle pass diagonally through two black 

 dots on each segment, and reach almost to the spiracular 

 line, which is waved, and dark brown in colour. The 

 spiracles are pink, surrounded by a black ring, and over 

 each is a black dot ; the legs, claspers, and body beneath. 



