NOTES, CAPTURES, ETC. 91 
touching, on a small twig of birch. On June Ist they all hatched, 
and it was curious to see how each larva came out of the same 
end of the egg, and made a similar and perfectly circular hole in 
it. The egg-shells remained with a beautiful mother-of-pearl 
gloss on them. The young larvee seemed very lively and healthy 
at their birth, and soon began eating the young birch leaves with 
which I supphed them. Their first change took place on June 
9th, the second on June 19th and 20th, the third on June 29th, 
and the last moult was on July 9th, LOth, and 11th. Thus they 
seemed to change with great regularity after every ten days, and 
between each moult they eat heartily but not voraciously, growing 
rapidly at the same time. One out of the eleven unfortunately died 
in its “ childhood ” from some unknown cause. Some two days 
before spinning up they left off eating and began to lose their 
brightness of colour, ultimately turning to a dirty, brownish 
green, with a decided dark pink tint along the back. Before 
settling on their place for pupation, they became exceedingly 
restless, crawling about with rapid motion for some hours, and 
emitting some very wet, dark-coloured excrement. They went 
down into the earth only about half an inch or so, where they 
made a loose cocoon of earth and silk. The dates of their spin- 
ning up were as follows:—'T'wo on July 22nd, one on the 25th, 
two on the 27th, two on the 28th, two on the 29th, and one 
not until August 5th. The first emerged the following 16th of 
March, and another on the 22nd; both were very fine male 
specimens. But no more appeared in 1884, although they kept 
alive. During the winter of 1884-5 I placed the remaining six 
pupe (two I had sent away) with some others in a greenhouse 
kept at a temperature of about 65°, and kept them damp. The 
result of this experiment was that a fine male emerged on January 
21st, 1885; another on the 30th; a female on February 5th; 
another on the 7th; and a third on the 13th; the sixth died. 
All were very beautiful specimens, and not in any way crippled. 
—J. Seymour Sr. Joun; Chalfont St. Peter, Slough, Feb. 19. 
Hapits oF THE Larva OF PoLiA FLAVICINCTA.— One summer 
day of last year I observed that the flowers on several plants of 
foxgloves (Digitalis) in my garden were eaten off, apparently by 
some larva. At first the depredator was not to be found, but a 
closer search discovered him stretched at full length on the 
stalk of the plant, and completely concealed among the im- 
