THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



No. 58.] OCTOBER, MDCCCLXVIII. [Price 6d. 



Life-history of Ennomos fuscmitaria. — The eggs, which 

 are of an apple-green colour, and shaped like a brick with 

 the corners rounded, and with a raised rim round one of the 

 ends, are laid in September, side by side, with great neatness, 

 and form a regular series, all the ends having the rim being 

 in one direction, which I have already described as being the 

 case with the eggs of Scoria dealbata and some other moths. 

 It is some years since my friend Mr. Doubleday showed me 

 several of these strings or series of eggs, some of them con- 

 taining as many as forty eggs, and all laid in a chip box ; but 

 in a state of nature the parent moth selects the smooth rind 

 of the twigs of Fraxinus excelsior (common ash), on the 

 leaves of which tree the larva seems almost exclusively to 

 feed : a series of these eggs has a striking resemblance to a 

 tapeworm in miniature ; when the egg is about to hatch, 

 which event takes place during the following May, and gene- 

 rally between the 20th and the end of the month, the colour, 

 instead of becoming darker and of a leaden colour, so fre- 

 quently the case with the eggs of Lepidoptera, assumes a 

 paler and even a silvery tint. The young larva? do not 

 emerge simultaneously, but those even in the same string of 

 eggs will frequently occupy ten days in their emergence, and 

 this without apparent order : as they emerge they scatter 

 themselves over the newly-expanded leaves of the ash, soon 

 making their presence known either by small circular holes 

 in the disk of the leaf, or semicircular excavations in its 

 edge ; they continue this habit as they increase in size, 

 reminding the entomologist very forcibly of the cuttings 

 made in the leaves of our rose-bushes during summer by the 

 leaf-cutter bee: at the beginning of July the larva? are gene- 

 rally full-fed, and then vest in a stiff and straight position, 

 with the anterior part and legs held quite free, and the 

 claspers firmly attached to the leaf-stalk of the ash, which 



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