144 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



insects are thoroughly worthy of the deepest study, inasmuch 

 as they are " Nature's favourite productions, in which, to 

 manifest her power and skill, she has combined all that is 

 either beautiful and graceful, interesting and alluring, or 

 curious and singular, in any class of her children." All 

 honour, then, to Mr. Armitage's knot of eccentrics, whose 

 vocation and delight it is to collect specimens of the 

 wonderful little creatures that leap, that run, that fly, that 

 walk, that bore into the ground, that drive galleries through 

 timber, that disport themselves in the air or gambol in the 

 water, that gleam with phosphorescent radiance, that furnish 

 us with silk, honey, wax, and lac, that build structures more 

 marvellous than the pyramids, and that can upon occasion 

 defend themselves stoutly, and, with poisoned weapons, 

 resent the outrages of the tyrant Man. What is he, after all, 

 with his two eyes and two legs, when yonder tiny thing, 

 crawling on the rim of a wine-glass, has eyes by octaves and 

 legs by the dozen ? Mr. Armitage's whole picture, with its 

 quaint motto, " Beati Possidentes," is replete with qualities 

 of quaintness and sober drollery ; and the entomological 

 specimens on the auction room table, with the other details, 

 down to the matches " warranted only to light on the box," 

 are most dexterously and effectively rendered. — ' Daily 

 Telegraph; May 18, 1878. 



ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. 



Sphinx ligustri. — Does the larva of Sphinx ligustri 

 change its skin only once ? T see by ' Larvag of the British 

 Lepidoptera, and their Food-plants' (part 1, p. xxiv of the 

 Introduction), by Owen S. Wilson : — " Some lepidopterous 

 larvae change their skins many times, others but few, Sphinx 

 ligustri but once ;" and by the plates some of the SphingidcB 

 have the horn on the 12th, but most of them have it on the 

 13ih segment, and many of them have fourteen segments. Is 

 this correct ? I was taught by an old entomologist that all 

 larvae had thirteen segments, the head always considered 

 the 1st.— W. Condy; Laira, May IS, 1878. 



[Newport, quoted by Packard, ' Guide to the Study of 

 Insects' (p. 63), states that the larva of Sphinx ligustri 

 moults six times. The body of the larvae of Lepidoptera 

 consists of thirteen segments, counting the head as one; 

 never, 1 believe, of fourteen. In the larvae of the Sp/iingidce 

 the horn, when present, is on the I'ith segment. — Ed.] 



