114 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



in wheat.* My kind friend W. R. Jeffery, of Saffron Walden, 

 has sent me a dozen of these larvae, greatly varying in size : 

 when young they spin together two leaves of the barberry, 

 adjusting the edges with so much care that the two leaves 

 look like one ; the back of the upper leaf I always find 

 applied to the face of the lower ; and between these 

 leaves the enclosed larva rests in a curved posture, the 

 head brought round to touch the side of the 10th segment, 

 but the larva always resting on its ventral surface, and not 

 ring-fashion : in this retreat it eats the cuticle and paren- 

 chyma of the upper leaf, its operations betraying its where- 

 abouts by the appearance of a large brown blotch on the 

 surface. The full-fed larva is obese and somewhat depressed, 

 the head glabrous, narrower than the body, which is of nearly 

 uniform substance throughout, and furnished, on the sides 

 especially, with minute scattered bristles : there are no ex- 

 crescences. Colour of the head wainscot-brown, with a few 

 black dots : body with the dorsal surface dull lead-colour, 

 bordered with a blackish stripe on each side : beneath this 

 is a series of orange spots, and in the middle of each spot a 

 black spiracle : ventral surface pale smoke-colour, with two 

 darker blotches on each side of each segment, the upper of 

 which is small and roundish, the lower larger and longer ; 

 intermediate between the lead-coloured dorsal surl'ace and 

 its marginal dark stripe is a series of white dots : the legs are 

 dark ; the claspers concolorous with the ventral surface. 

 Full-fed on the 6th of July. — Edward Newman. 



Description of the Larva of Diantha'cia ctesia. — Mr. 

 Gregson having watched a female of this new British moth 

 depositing her eggs on the flowers of Silene inllata, in the 

 Isle of Man, gathered the flowers, and has succeeded in 



* In some of our western counties frogs are destroyed by gardeners 

 under a charge of feeding ou strawberries! I believe there is uo way of 

 enlightening the public on these subjects: I recollect once seeing a hedge- 

 hog convicted and executed ou a charge of milking cows ; I showed the 

 executioner the impossibility of the animal getting the cow's nipple into its 

 mouth, but his lriun)])hant although rather vague reply was, "'J'hey 

 stretches to anyihing." In the instance of the barberry the so-called 

 " blight " is a fungus, and is supposed to be identical with a somewhat 

 similar fungus highly injurious to wheat, l)ul the two are of diffcirent 

 genera, and there is uo grouud whatever for supposing there is any con- 

 nexion between theiu. 



