NOTES ON LOBOPHORA VIRETATA. 261 



and of these sixteen were females, which are easily distinguished 

 from the opposite sex by the absence of the " lobe " on the 

 hinder wings. 



I placed five of these females in a well-ventilated box with 

 some sprays of holly in blossom, hoping that they would lay, 

 killing and setting the remainder. On inspecting my setting- 

 boards a day or two afterwards I found four eggs, laid by as 

 many specimens of the females, on the boards, I transferred 

 these to a glass-topped box, in which they hatched on June 10th, 

 one young larva being pale yellow, with a black and very 

 distinctly bifid head. I supplied my larvae with flowers of the 

 holly and mountain-ash, the latter being also fairly abundant 

 at Sutton, and likewise with leaves of privet ; but I found that 

 the flowers of the holly alone were eaten, and upon these the 

 little larvae throve amazingly. Meanwhile my five females in 

 the box were all dead, and, on examining the holly-leaves and 

 flowers closely with a magnifying-glass, I failed to detect a 

 single egg. However, I transferred the flowers, which by this 

 time were withered, to the box which contained the other larvse, 

 and in a few days two more larvae made their appearance, a 

 welcome addition, as one of my original five had somehow been 

 lost. The holly-flowers were now all withered, but, upon the substi- 

 tution of young berries, the larvae took to them at once, gnawing 

 into the berry close to the insertion of the stalk, and greedily 

 devouring the interior. 



The larvae now began to assume a greener tinge, and in 

 addition to this three out of the six were marked down the back 

 with chocolate blotches, which varied in size and intensity of 

 colour in the different specimens, reminding one closely in this 

 respect of the larva of Asthena blomeri. They appeared to feed 

 almost exclusively at night, resting in the day-time in a curved 

 position upon the stalks of the holly-berries, to which they were 

 attached by the claspers only, the fore part of the body being 

 raised. I noticed also that they had spun a number of fine 

 silken threads around the spray on which they fed, to which the 

 pellets of frass were plentifully attached ; and from this I can 

 fully understand what my friend Mr. Bath has informed me, 

 viz., that although he has several times beaten the hollies at 

 Sutton for this larva, he has never yet succeeded in obtaining it. 



My larvse fed up rapidly, and on June 28th I found the two 



