70 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



moth appeared early in January, and others have continued 

 to make their appearance at intervals ever since. The first 

 ten or eleven were all males, and then females began to ap- 

 pear : up to the present time twenty-seven males and eighteen 

 females have emerged. Although the average temperature of 

 the air in the room differs but little from that of the external 

 atmosphere, yet the pupae were affected by confinement, as 

 the molhs would not have appeared so early in the year, or 

 have continued to emerge for such a length of lime, in a 

 state of naliue. lam aware that female moths are seldom 

 attracted by a light, but they certainly come to sallow- 

 blossoms and sugar just as readily as the males. I frequently 

 saw, last summer, twenty or thirty females of Agrotis Segetum 

 and A. exclamationis at sugar on the trunk of a single tree, 

 and large numbers of female trilinea, many of which were 

 qi/ite perfect when all the males were worn and ragged. — 

 Henry Doiibleday ; Epping, April 16, 1866. 



Prior Appearance of Male or Female Lepidoptera. — 

 Should not any observatious which may be made during the 

 coming summer, for the purpose of determining the prior ap- 

 pearance of male or female Lepidoptera, be confined to such 

 species as may be reared from the egg, or from larvae which 

 can be proved to be of one brood ? Owibg to the fact that 

 collected larvae and pupae are the part of many different 

 broods which have not all emerged from the egg on the 

 same day, and in many instances have not fed upon the same 

 species of food-plant, I do not think that much dependence 

 can be placed on observations made on them. That there is 

 a great difference in the time of appearance from collected 

 specimens and those bred from the egg, will be seen from the 

 following observations. During last summer I collected 

 numerous chrysalises of Vanessa Urlicae, the perfect insects 

 from vvliich continued to emerge at intervals extending over 

 twenty days. 1 also found, on a nettle, a brood of the same 

 insect which had just come out Irom the egg. These all 

 entered the pupa slate within a few hours of each other, and 

 in forty-eight hours from the time of the appearance of the 

 first imago the whole were out. The same results followed 

 a brood of V. lo, nearly a hundred of which specie»rwere 

 out in the breeding-cage at one time, but the collected 

 chrysalises gave up their perfect insects at various times. 



