218 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



general well-kncwn accuracy of this author, that some of the 

 referenceswere possibly made to other speciesofP6ro7?ea, of which, 

 however, it must be confessed there is not the slightest evidence. 

 I have repeatedly tried to obtain ova in the autumn, but have 

 never been successful. I had long supposed that the imagines 

 hybernated, and Mr. Tutt tells me that Frey says (' Lep. 

 Schweiz,' p. 281) : ' Falter im tiefsten Spiitherbste und nach 

 der Ueberwinterung im Friihling.' Merrin states that the 

 imagines are found from September to November, but says 

 nothing of their re-occurrence in spring." 



I may say here in passing that Sorhagen's list of food- 

 plants, which caused Clark to express doubts as to its correct- 

 ness, is absolutely correct so far as it goes, although it is by no 

 means comjDlete. 



Since Clark wrote, which was in 1901, Mr. E. R. Bankes 

 ('Ent. Eecord,' xxi, p. 44, 1909) writes ('Trans. Chich. and 

 West Sussex Nat. Hist, and Micr. Soc.,' 1885-6, p. 70): "Mr. 

 W. H. B. Fletcher, stated that he had bred P. cristana ' from 

 larvae on flowers and fruits of Pi/riis aria, collected in Arundel 

 Park,' and in his ' Catalogue of Sussex Lepidoptera,' published 

 in 1905, in the * Victoria History of Sussex,' he gives the species 

 as occurring in Arundel Park, where the larvse feed upon fruits 

 and flowers of Pyrus aria, and doubtless also on those of haw- 

 thorn there and in many other places on the Downs.' I learn 

 from my friend Mr. Fletcher that, although the number of 

 imagines reared was limited, his experience was quite sufficient 

 to prove that in Arundel Park it is a regular habit of these larvse 

 to feed in the manner described." 



This was, so far as I am aware, all that was known of the 

 earlier stages at the time I commenced to try and work them 

 out in 1915. 



In the autumn of that year I paid two week-end visits to 

 that chief locality for P. cristana, the New Forest, and one of 

 the precise localities having been pointed out to me, I collected 

 therein 218 specimens, which included examples of 34 named 

 forms. On my return from the later visit, which took place in 

 October, I dug up a small bush of whitethorn, which the authori- 

 ties considered the most likely food-plant, and replanted it in a 

 large flower-pot. I then cut it down to a convenient shape and 

 enclosed it with a muslin cover, and on October 12th I put 

 inside this cover about a dozen imagines of P. cristana, consist- 

 ing of both sexes, which I had brought home alive from the New 

 Forest. This bush I placed on the north side of a yew hedge in 

 the garden, and allowed it to remain exposed to the weather 

 all the winter. 



The moths moved very little during the winter months so 

 far as I could ascertain, and rested chiefly on the branches, with 

 their wings closely wrapped round a twig, often at its juncture 



