A TOMATO CATERPILLAR. 287 
and I think they must be taken almost within the hour they 
emerge to be in really good condition ; and even when so taken, 
there is a sort of beautiful fulvous bloom about them which seems 
to go off after they are dead. The males, when alive, are, I 
think, more beautiful than the females, but it is almost impossible 
to get them in perfection. Out of some thirty or forty males 
which I took, only one was quite beyond reproach. As soon as 
they have been out a little while, the spots seem to disappear. 
Lastly, as far as my experience goes, where you find H. acte@on 
you will also find Argynnis aglaia, Melanargia galatea, Satyrus 
semele, Lycena corydon, and, later on, L. adonis, in greater or less 
abundance. 
Hartley Wintney, Winchfield. 
A TOMATO OATERPILLAR (HELIOTHIS ARMIGERA). 
By J. ARKLe. 
FRUITERERS and others who import Valencia tomatoes in the 
months of June and July will have noticed among the fruit an 
occasional caterpillar, about an inch and a half long, apparently 
quite smooth, greyish, but ornamented with blue or purple 
touches, and with a drab-coloured zigzag stripe along each side. 
In this north-western part of the country the tomatoes arrive, 
from Spain, at Liverpool, packed in small shallow boxes. A 
number of these boxes, in their turn, fill a case, and, after the 
excise officer has tapped one or two, they find themselves diverging 
miles away to the various shops, where they are received by the 
retail dealers and dispensed to tomato-eating customers. 
It was last year when I began an acquaintance with the cater- 
pillar, which escapes, in the first instance, the eye of the swarthy 
packer in Valencia, and, lastly, the keen scrutiny of the Custom 
House officers at Liverpool. Two specimens were sent to me, 
with the several tomatoes in which they had nearly buried them- 
selves; but, as I used an ordinary tumbler for a cage with a 
piece of glass over the top, the larve were drowned in the 
unhealthy juice generated under such insanitary conditions. 
In June and July of this year I obtained about a dozen cater- 
pillars, a number which was reduced to about six, through having 
to pass into non-entomological hands. I havea description of them 
in my note-book, which runs as follows:—Ground colour, dorsally, 
light brown or warm ochreous, beautifully striated with thin light 
brown and yellow lines; under side, legs and claspers a darker 
shade. Head light brown, reticulated with ochreous. Second 
segment black, reticulated with cream colour. There is a double 
very thin blue-black medio-dorsal line down the entire length of 
the caterpillar. On each side—below this delicate double line, 
