THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



No. 20.] OCTOBER, MDCCCLXV. [Price 6d. 



Life-hhtory of Bomhyx TrifoUi. — A succession of females 

 extrude their eggs throughout the month of August, and 

 during the first ten days of September ; the oviposition of 

 each individual female extends to three days and no more : 

 the eggs are of a pale brown colour, and are dropped among 

 the herbage without apparent method, always finding their 

 way to the ground. The larva emerges in the autumn, but is 

 very difficult to find at that season or during the winter, 

 when it hybernates near the surface of the earth. It feeds on 

 several species of grass ; indeed I have found it in confine- 

 ment perfectly indifferent in this matter, but I have never 

 been able to induce it to eat any leguminous plant: it has, 

 however, been so constantly asserted that this is the case, 

 that I am disinclined to draw anj' inference from my own 

 observations, which are simply negative : when the larva 

 ascends the herbage, in April, it is three-tenths of an inch in 

 length : it then rests extended on a blade or stalk of grass in 

 a straight position, and, when it feeds, embraces the food 

 with its feet, and devours from the tip downwards ; but if 

 disturbed it immediately falls to the ground, and rolls itself 

 into a compact but not very perfect ring, the two extremities 

 not meeting with precision, but passing each other, and thus 

 giving a one-sided appearance to the ring : the same characters 

 are observable during the entire period of its growth : after 

 the end of April it feeds up very rapidly, and is full-fed at 

 the end of May or beginning of June. Head hairy, scarcely 

 as wide as the 2nd segment, which has three wart-like pro- 

 tuberances on each side of its anterior margin : body almost 

 uniformly cylindrical, the incisions of the segments not dis- 

 tinctly marked, every part of the body being densely clothed 

 with soft hairs ; the hairs on the dorsal region tend towards a 

 medio-dorsal line, thus Ibrming a medio-dorsal ridge or crest 

 which extends the entire lengtli. Colour of the head pur- 

 plish black, adorned with orange markings ; the labrum and 



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