334 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Dominula. Last summer I met with a male of L. mesomella, 

 with wings the same pale yellow colour as the paler speci- 

 mens of L. stramineola, and a female of A. strigillaria, in 

 which the space between the first and second bars of the fore 

 wings is filled up with the same colour as the bars them- 

 selves, thus forming a brown and very conspicuous band. — G. 

 B. Cor bin. 



Alacila Polydactyla. — To all who dabble in the preserva- 

 tion of birds and quadrupeds, it is well known — often from 

 sad experience — that they have many insect-enemies to 

 combat with, whose ravages to fur or feathers are sometimes 

 as insidious as they are destructive. It is not a pleasant 

 sight, after a bird or small quadruped has been in a case 

 for three or four years, apparently in a perfect state of 

 preservation, to see a Tinea tapetzella, or some other less- 

 decidedly marked or smaller example of the army of so-called 

 clotbes'-moths, settled upon the inside of the glass, as it is 

 well known that its presence there betokens mischief. Occa- 

 sionally, however, such a thing will happen, even with our 

 most carefully-preserved and mounted specimens. Some five 

 years ago 1 fitted up a case of sea-gulls, which remain 

 unaltered ; but during December last I was surprised to see 

 a moth settled U|)on the inside of the glass. A closer 

 inspection did not reveal a specimen of Pellionella, Fene- 

 streila, or any other of our usually-recognized enemies, but 

 an example of Alucita polydactyla. Our books tell us that 

 the larva of this insect feeds inside the buds of honeysuckle, 

 so 1 do not wish in the least to bring the accusation against 

 this pretty little insect that it had lived on any part of my 

 birds ; but the question arises, In what stage of its transfor- 

 mation had it passed the more than five years of imprison- 

 ment, as the case had never been opened, and there are 

 decidedly no means of ingress or egress ? If the egg could 

 have in any way been inadvertently introduced with the 

 rock-work, &c., with which the case is filled up, I scarcely 

 think it would have laid dormant so long a time, and 

 supposing it had hatched, what could the larva have eaten? 

 and although we are all aware that the perfect insect hyber- 

 nates very freely, yet such a protracted hybernation seems 

 scarcely compatible with what we know of the general 

 hybernation of insects in the perfect stale. Longevity in the 



