NOTES ON LEPIDOPTERA FROM THE MEDITERRANEAN. 115 



flying about some honeysuckle, but not having a net with me I 

 was unable to catch it. Surely this was very late? 



We left Trieste on Sept. 15th, and arrived at Pirano the 

 same day. Pirano is only some ten miles from Trieste, and is 

 situated just inside Madonna Point, at the south-west corner of 

 the Gulf of Trieste. It is an old-fashioned little town, with an 

 old wall and towers which used to protect it on the land side, 

 and an old fortress. There are many delightful walks among 

 gardens and vineyards, and above them on the hill-sides there 

 is a certain amount of uncultivated ground, where I met with 

 most of the species I observed at Trieste, P. vicera, of which I 

 saw three or four, being the only addition. C. hyale was more 

 plentiful here, and I saw another L. argiades. 



On the afternoon of Sept. 17th, while passing a fence by the 

 side of a small patch of Indian corn, I noticed a brown-looking 

 object near the ground, upon one of the palings, partially 

 hidden among some sprays of common bindweed which was 

 climbing up the fence, and upon stooping down discovered that 

 it was a large full-grown larva of Sphinx canvolvuli. It was 

 almost the exact colour of the piece of rail upon which it rested. 

 There was a quantity of bindweed growing among and up the 

 stalks of the Indian corn, and I had a long hunt in the hope of 

 finding more, but did not do so. The next day I was passing 

 the same place, and stopped to gather some food, when I was 

 pleased to find a small larva about a week old. It was If inches 

 long, of a pale glaucous- green colour, thickly irrorated with 

 raised white dots, with seven oblique white stripes, bordered 

 above by a darker shade of green on the sides. Spiracles 

 orange ; legs pink ; horn nearly straight, slender, yellowish green, 

 tip black. On Sept. 26th, while we were at Corfu, I landed on 

 Vido Island to procure some food for the above larva, which by 

 this time was nearly full-grown ; and when I came on board I 

 placed the bindweed upon a piece of newspaper, and when I 

 removed it to put it into a bottle of water, I found two tiny little 

 larvae, which I must have picked with the food, crawling over 

 the paper, and two days after I noticed that there were three 

 small larvae with the large one, so that there must have been an 

 egg or another larva on the food. They appeared to be common 

 on Vido, for on two other occasions when I went for food I 

 picked either eggs or small larvae, as I had eight altogether when 

 we left. The larvae fed up very rapidly, for the last just hatched, 

 found on Sept. 27th, had buried by October 18th. The larvae do 

 not assume their brown coats until after their last change of 

 skin ; at least none of mine did. 



It is rather difficult to rear larvae on board ship. When they 

 are small, and I know that they are not likely to bury or spin 

 up, I place the food with a piece of stick in an ordinary wine- 

 bottle, and then sleeve it, tying one end of the sleeve round the 



