238 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
which is pencilled as if by an unsteady hand—there is a space or 
interval of the ground colour. Then succeed four or five more 
lines close together, and similar to the dorsal ones. Lastly, there 
is a broad waved drab or light ochreous stripe all along the side 
and containing the jet-black spiracles. Hach segment has, dorsally, 
four jet-black minute spots or tubercles, each of which emits a 
black bristle. The whole dorsal surface is sparingly clothed with 
minute hairs. This is, I believe, the caterpillar of the male; that 
of the female is slightly greenish, the markings are almost similar 
but exceedingly faint, the conspicuous side stripe is absent or 
nearly so, and there are purplish oblique dashes or suffusions on 
the sides of each segment. The caterpillar of what I take to be 
the male has a bluish instead of a purplish appearance. 
I kept the larve, this season, in a flower-pot half filled with 
soil, and placed them on a warm kitchen shelf. Any juice which 
might run from the food (a tomato or two) was therefore absorbed, 
and the soil turned out to be a natural place for pupation. 
The first caterpillar disappeared on June 26th, and the first 
two moths emerged July 27th; a third appeared on the 15th of 
August, while a caterpillar I had kept out of doors appeared as a 
perfect insect August 11th. 
Of the four moths I bred, two, I believe, are females. In this 
sex the upper wings are reddish, with two central, but indistinct, 
dark brown waved transverse lines. These lines include the 
black orbicular dot, and the adjacent pale circular reniform. 
The lower wings are straw-coloured, with a central dark brown 
crescentic mark. Parallel with the outer margins of upper and 
lower wings, in both sexes, is a broad dark brown band. The 
antenns, in both sexes, are simple. The thorax, which has a 
thin longitudinal crest, is, in the female, of the same colour as 
the fore wings, while the body is straw-coloured, with a median 
dark brown shade. In the male all the wings, thorax, and body © 
are straw-coloured; but the fringes of the upper wings are 
reddish, as in the female. 
My next step was to get the moths identified, and in this I 
had every assistance from Messrs. Watkins and Doncaster, of the 
Strand, London, who not only named the insects, but enabled me 
to acquire much useful information respecting them. 
The geographical range of the moth appears to be a wide 
one:—South Africa, India, some of the Indo-Malayan Islands, 
Australia, and notably the United States of America, where it 
attacks, in the larva state, the cotton crop. It also devours many 
other plants, such as Virginia creeper, potato, &c. It seems to 
occur but sparingly in this country (see Newman’s ‘ British 
Moths,’ p. 439). Had we a dryer climate, H. armigera might 
soon become a serious imported scourge to our gardeners and 
agriculturists. 
Chester, Sept. 8, 1892. 
