NOTES AND OBSRRVATIONS. 215 



the food-plant appear early in the spring, the larva is about again and 

 continues to mine the leaves until full fed. As they get bigger they 

 move from leaf to leaf. I specially watched, with the aid of a glass, 

 one commence the process of mining a leaf. It pressed its small, 

 shiny, fiat head on the leaf and started gnawing like a rat, and by 

 degrees forced its way between the cuticles of the leaf until it was 

 completely hidden as if in a bag. The colour of the full-fed larva 

 varies, but is generally of a dingy flesh colour at the sides and yellow 

 to dull white along the back, which to the eye appears as two zig-zag 

 stripes. On each segment there are six flat, densely-hairy warts ; 

 this gives them a downy appearance. The rows of warts on the back 

 are surrounded by a yellow ground, and the whole dorsal surface is 

 covered with minute black dots. The claspers are of a liglit flesh 

 colour in some, and a drab colour in others. When the leaf is picked 

 off the larva inside invariably backs out and falls in the grass. It 

 does not roll up, but lies in a crescent shape, but if touched or worried 

 it contracts both extremities, forming an oval ball, the head entirely 

 disappearing. They crawl very clumsily. I was showing some of 

 them to a friend of mine, and even our talking appeared to annoy 

 them, causing them to fall from the food-plant. This is hardly 

 surprising, as they are only acquainted with the silence of th.e vast 

 South Downs. When pupating it forms a tough white silken cocoon 

 close under the surface of tire ground. The pupa is of a bright yellow 

 colour with the wing-cases of a darker shade. The imago rarely flies 

 and is more often found crawling up the grass. The female is 

 especially fond of settling on the yellow mullein. In windy weather 

 they disappear altogether in the grass. I have a series of imagines 

 taken at two different localities, and of these there are three or four 

 distinct types. I collected over a hundred larvae between May 3rd 

 and 20th, and these all pupated, remaining in this state from three 

 weeks to one month. This insect seems to be free from parasites. 

 In ' Macrolepidoptera of the World ' (Seitz) Dr. K. Jordan terms 

 the British insect I. cognata and not cjlobularice. Further life-history 

 notes : Ova deposited about June 12th hatch about July 7th. Larva, 

 from July 7th to 10th, hibernate when quite young, full fed May 10th 

 to 15th. Pupa, from three to four weeks, imagines emerging June 1st 

 to 14th. — F. G. S. Bramwell ; " Coniston," 1, Dyke Road, Brighton. 



EUPROCTIS CHRYSORRHCEA ON HiPPOPHAE RHAMNOIDES. Last 



week I was at Littlestone-on-Sea and walked over to the sandhills 

 mentioned {antea, p. 169) by Mr. F. V. Theobald in his account of 

 Euproctis chrysorrhcva on the Sea Buckthorn in June last. The 

 buckthorn covers a comparatively small area of ground and is 

 divided into three clumps, two close together and the other some 

 thirty to fifty yards away. This last clump was the one figured in 

 the ' Entomologist ' {antea, p. 170) ; it was almost as bare as in the 

 picture, not a solitary leaf having been left by the larvae, but a fresh 

 crop of young leaves was just beginning to burst forth. As far as 

 I could see none of the larvae had spun up their cocoons on this 

 devastated clump but had migrated in a body for this purpose to 

 the other clumps, which had apparently been scarcely touched by 

 them during their feeding activities. In these two clumps the 



