18 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



{empyrea), two being crippled and the rest fine specimens. The 

 hu'vte, which hatched out on the 4th of December last from ova 

 laid about the middle of October, were kept through the winter 

 in a room without a fire, feeding on low plants, cliiefl}' buttercup 

 {Ranunculus hulbosus and the allied species), and later on the 

 lesser celandine {R.ficaria), but they do not seem to be attached 

 to any particular plant, and I have not noticed the lesser celan- 

 dine growing in the locality for the imago. They were feeding 

 all through the winter, but grew very slowly. As the larva has 

 been already well described b}' Mr. Woodbridge in the ' Ento- 

 mologist ' for June, 1885, 1 need not attempt an}^ further descrip- 

 tion, as no doubt he had the larva in its last stage. Towards 

 the end of April, the larvae, having changed their skins for the 

 last time, and become brown instead of bright green, as they had 

 been through the winter, refused the various low plants offered 

 to them. I then supplied them with shoots of privet and the 

 blossom and young buds of ash. They took readily to the latter, 

 and several spun their loose earth cocoons near the surface of 

 the ground about the middle of May. Several larvae died about 

 the middle of April, probabl}^ from being kept in jars without 

 sufiicient ventilation during the winter. The moths emerged 

 rather later than the species does as a rule in a wild state, the 

 first emerging on the 8th of October and the last on the 20th. 

 The species was very scarce near here this autumn ; in fact, I 

 only took three fine specimens, and two of those were on the 

 24th of September. All attempts at forcing the larvse in the 

 winter failed, and the only pupa which did not produce a moth 

 was one I tried to force. Some larvse of Agrotis saucia, placed 

 in a hothouse towards the end of last December, fed up rapidly 

 and produced imagines in February and March. — William 

 Edward Nicholson; Lewes, November 23, 1886. 



EuMENES coARCTATA AND ITS Parasite. — Mr. W. McKae, in 

 November, sent two cells of Eumenes coarctata, and four 

 ichneumons which had been bred from them ; two of the 

 parasites were males of Linoceras macrobatus, a very rare 

 Cryptid. Mr. Pascoe took a male at Ventnor ; this, I believe, is 

 the only one that has been taken recently in Britain. Perris and 

 Graf bred it on the Continent from Eumenes coarctata, and 

 Giraud from Osmia adunca (see Entom. xvi. 36). These are, so 

 far as I know, the only records of Linoceras having been bred. 



