92 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



my sitting-room. No change was yet observable in their appear- 

 ance, the pupae remaining white like the rest. However, the 

 process of formation had evidently being going on, for in 

 another fortnight three had begun to change colour. The 

 length of time between this stage and the point of emergence 

 varied from seven to fourteen days or thereabouts (cf. an 

 interesting article in Ent. Rec. vi. 257) ; and the noticeable 

 changes were three in number as follows : — 



(1) More opaque, and creamy in colour. 



(2) Faint pink and grey square marks on wing-cases, and 

 thorax'darkening. 



(3) Uniform dark leaden colour all over. 



The removal to cooler temperature apparently did not affect 

 them, except perhaps in retarding their emergence for a 

 few days. 



Furthermore, I found that at intervals though November 

 and December all my other unforced lucina were forming, the 

 ordinary temperature of my room (without any moisture) 

 evidently being sufficient to bring them out before their time. 

 So, out of eighteen larvae I have seventeen perfect imagines 

 (the majority females), only one producing a malformation. 



NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



Lyc^na arion. — I have experience of larvae of this species for 

 some three years, rearing them (up to a certain point) from the ova 

 laid by females taken by myself ; and although I have hitherto failed 

 to get them to pupate, I have had larvae nearly, if not quite, full-grown. 

 The larva described by Mi*. E. B. Nevinson in the last number of the 

 ' Entomologist ' (ante, p. 71) does not accord with those I have had. 

 The colour of the larvae I have had was more or less lilac, this colour 

 becoming more brilliant as the larvae increased, until it might almost 

 be described as violet. At this period they spun together the seed- 

 heads of the thyme, but I never succeeded in finding them alive in 

 the spring following. The imago would scarcely be over by Aug. 18th, 

 the date on which Mr. Nevinson's larva was probably full-fed. — A. B. 

 Farn ; Mount Nod, Greenhithe, March 2nd, 1899. 



Note on the Larva of Phorodesma smaragdaria. — Some time 

 since I had the opportunity of observing the method by which a 

 larva of P. smaragdaria dresses itself with the fragments of food-plant 

 which form its protective covering. When it has changed its skin, the 

 larva is seen to have a number of tubercles on its back; these 

 tubercles secrete a sticky fluid. Having, of course, shed the old 

 adornment with its skin, and requiring to redecorate itself, it at once 

 proceeds to do so by seizing a fragment of the food-plant attached to 

 its cast-off skin, and, removing this, places it on its back, moving it to 

 and fro until the particle adheres to one of the tubercles, through the 



