THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 139 



existence, appears in the perfect state. I am indebted to 

 Mr. Backhouse and Mr. Doubleday for a supply of these 

 larvaj, and for many interesting particulars of the economy 

 of the species. — Edtvard Newman. 



Li/e-history of Bomhyx Quercus (Oak Eggar). — The male 

 flies rapidly, both by broad daylight and after sunset, at the 

 latter end of July and beginning of August ; the female is 

 very lethargic, and rarely moves prior to impregnation ; in 

 some instances the males have been observed by hundreds 

 buzzing about and crawling up the herbage in the neighbour- 

 hood of a virgin female : after impregnation the female also 

 flies, but heavily, lazily and languidly, and never to the same 

 extent or with the same rapidity as the male ; during her 

 slow and oscillating flight she scatters her eggs, which, being 

 unprovided with glutinous covering, do not adiiere to any 

 object with which they may happen to come in contact. The 

 young larvae emerge towards the end of August, and at first 

 are of a somewhat dull ash-colour or smoky gray, the divi- 

 sions of the segments being marked with orange : they feed 

 on Rubus fruticosus (bramble), Crataegus oxyacantha (white- 

 thorn), Prunus spinosa (blackthorn), Cytisns scoparius 

 (broom), and a number of other shrubs : towards the end of 

 October, when they hybernate, they are somewhat more than 

 an inch long, and fall off the food-plant when annoyed, form- 

 ing a very compact ring, with the head slightly on one side. 

 Head prone, scarcely so wide as the body, and clothed with 

 soft hair : body uniformly cylindrical, excepting a small ex- 

 crescence or wart on each side of the 2nd segment, close to 

 the head ; these warts are crowned with radiating hairs, and 

 every other part of the bod}' is clothed with soft downy hairs. 

 Colour of the head purplish black; body also purplish black, 

 the dorsal surface deeper velvety black, with the 2nd seg- 

 ment almost entirely orange, and the 12di segment having a 

 large orange spot; the intervening segments have each a 

 somewhat lozenge-shaped medio-dorsal ornamentation, con- 

 sisting of four transverse orange markings, separated only by 

 slender black lines, and the first and second of them inter- 

 sected by a pure white wedge-shaped mark : the second of 

 the orange markings is much the most wide of the four, and 

 each of its extremities emits a thread-like streak directed 

 forwards, and this streak, interrupted at the incisions, is 



