25.4 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
kept wandering about without the least inclination to settle down. 
On looking at them the following morning they were still crawling 
backwards and forwards over each other in the corner of the cage, 
and doing anything but eating. I thought there must surely be 
some mistake in the food, and went at once to Woodford and dug 
up a number of small roots of various wild plants, and put them 
in the cage, but all to no purpose; the following day they were 
still crawling about, and some were hanging in the web at the edge 
of the cage dead. I again went to Box Hill, and dug out some 
tufts of grass and several plants from about the ground by the 
tree on which the moths were taken. On arriving home I put all 
I had gathered into the cage, and again, on looking at them the 
following morning, I had the satisfaction to find several larvee were 
feeding on one of the grasses I had brought home last, viz., Poa 
nemoralis. Afterwards I found they would as readily eat P. annua, 
which latter being obtainable nearly everywhere, I had no further 
trouble about their food. 
I was looking at them one morning at the end of the first 
week, watching them feeding, when, to my great surprise, an ant 
crawled up a blade of grass with a dead larva in its mouth, 
an achievement for which he very soon paid the penalty of death. 
IT immediately procured a fresh sod of grass, and removed every- 
thing from the cage, put in the fresh grass, and carefully shook 
and searched all the grass and plants that had been in the cage. 
I found and killed about a dozen ants, which I must have brought 
home with the grass roots; but they had made short work of my 
small larve, for, after most careful searching, I could only find 
twenty-nine. Probably many had died before I hit on the right 
food. ‘Those remaining gradually decreased one or two at a time 
during the winter, till after hybernation I had only seven remain- 
ing, and of these four more died, about one each week, till only 
three reached the pupa state. Watching them at this time once 
or twice a day, I removed the dead ones immediately, and have 
three of these larvae nicely preserved. 
After the first moult the colour is dark greyish green, with 
three distinct whitish lines along the body, head yellowish grey, 
spiracles black, with a few slight hairs. At this period of their 
life they were generally stretched at full length on a blade of 
srass when at rest, but as they get older they hide during the day 
among the roots, and come out at night to feed. 
