REAPPEARANCE OF DBILEPHILA GALII. 291 



thorough search on the first opportunity, I took train out to 

 Wallasey on the following Tuesday, Sept. 14th. My friend 

 would have joined me in the expedition had he been free, but he 

 was unfortunately detained by work. 



On approaching the Wallasey golf-house I met a boy with a 

 butterfly net, so I made his acquaintance, and asked him what 

 he had found. He had not been searching the bedstraw, and had 

 only got larvae of Bombi/x ruhi ; however, a man working on the 

 greens had shown him a curious hawk-caterpillar, which he de- 

 scribed as being like Chmrocampa elpenor, biit with eyes all along 

 the body. I guessed at once what it was, and thanked the lad 

 for his information, telling him that in all probability it was the 

 very creature I was in quest of. My first hunt therefore was to 

 find this green-keeper, which I soon succeeded in doing, and 

 there, sure enough, in the bottom of a tin was poor galii, trying 

 to turn without any sand. The man very generously gave it to 

 me, refusing to hear of any remuneration. I might mention 

 here that it turned to a pupa the same evening on my return 

 home, and is, I fear, slightly deformed through its rough 

 handling. He had found it when half-grown, on a grassy 

 meadow on the golf-course, and had kept it for a fortnight. It 

 may seem an odd roundabout way of picking up knowledge, but 

 this is where the motto of our excellent monthly journal comes 

 in — " By mutual confidence and mutual aid great deeds are 

 done and great discoveries made." To this spot I proceeded, 

 but it did not look a likely place, as there was but little sand, and 

 what bedstraw there was was growing amongst thick short grass. 

 I could find no trace of any larvsG here, so I took a straight 

 course of four or five hundred yards to the sandhills bordering 

 the shore, where I soon discovered a mound with bedstraw 

 growing sparsely all over the sand, and an occasional thicker 

 patch. 



It looked an ideal place, and so it would have been for me 

 had I been there a week earlier. Not one or two, but numbers 

 of galii had been feeding there, for the sand in many places was 

 literally strewn with large pellets of frass, some still quite fresh, 

 but I was too late. The nature of the place was such that I 

 could not have missed them, had they been there as caterpillars, 

 and an hour's diligent search only produced the shrivelled but 

 unmistakable skin of one that had succumbed. In two other 

 spots along the coast I found frass, but not in the same quantity, 

 and was again only doomed to disappointment, finding two more 

 dead. I could not leave without trying every expedient, so, 

 borrowing a spade from a house on the links, I returned to the 

 spot where the larvae had been plentiful. I took my coat oft' and 

 set to work with a will; but though I dug deep and shallow, and 

 ere and there and everywhere, it was all to no purpose. 



I feel confident that galii, like many other larvae, sometimes 



