226 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



taken. If the gentlemen who have made acquaintance with 

 Argynnis Niobe will associate with tliemselves one or two 

 entomologists of known skill in larva-hunting, and^ without 

 indicating the precise position of the valley or hollow between 

 Wye and Ashford to the entomological world generally, 

 arrange to make a careful united search for the larvae of 

 A. Niobe during the spring, we may possibly get a result 

 conclusive enough to satisfy all sceptics. — J. R. S. Clifford. 



[I think Mr. Clifford can never have hunted for the larvae of 

 Aglaia or of Adippe, or he would scarcely have proposed so 

 hopeless a task as seeking for those of Niobe. — E. Newman.] 



Food-plant of Orgxjia gonosUgnia. — May I venture to 

 remind my friendly correspondent, Mr. Robinson, of the old 

 saying, that "latet dolus in geueralibus." Had I been 

 disposed to generalise a short time ago, with reference to the 

 food-plant of the species cited, I should have said, speaking 

 of it from a knowledge of its habits in the Wimbledon 

 locality, that probably its proper food-plant was oak, though 

 it might occasionally be found on the hazel in summer, and 

 on sallow in spring. I know that in confinement Wimbledon 

 larvae take oak by preference. Now, at Coventry, O. gono- 

 stigma chooses, as Mr. Robinson finds, blackthorn and 

 whitethorn, preferring the latter. And my friend, Mr. Barrett, 

 of the South London Entomological Society, who was 

 acquainted with the Doncaster locality, tells me that there 

 the larvae were taken on the whitethorn. Were the species 

 to become more common with us, we might discover that — 

 like its near relative, O. antiqua — this is inclined to be a 

 general feeder. The apparent difficulty in the way of its 

 increase in England is the peculiarity of its life-history ; the 

 hybernation, which carries it through the cold months, 

 endangering the lives of many of the larvae, as they seem to 

 protect themselves very slightly. As most breeders know, by 

 a little management, the larvae of O. gonostigma may be got 

 to feed up the same year in which they are hatched ; but I 

 have been pursuing an investigation of some slight interest, 

 namely, to ascertain if, at any point we please during the 

 larval growth, we can, by placing them in a lower temperature 

 and withdrawing the food, induce individuals to become 

 torpid. Though hardly able to say as yet that my experiments 

 are conclusive, so far as they have gone they would show 



