102 Dr. T. A. Chapman on 



instinct that gave me trouble enough when I reared 

 them from the eg^, viz. a determination to wander away, 

 in spite of all obstacles, getting through the finest crannies, 

 and going too far to be recaptured. I found the most 

 practicable method of preventing their dispersion was to 

 put the vessel containing the eggs in the middle of a 

 vessel of water, on which all the young larvae would be 

 found floating (in a mass usually) and could be put on 

 their food. No doubt at Taormina by this wandering a 

 batch of eggs provided larva? that spread over a whole 

 patch of asphodel, though how one, and one only, stuck to 

 each plant is difficult to guess. 



In this way one easily accounts for finding a larva in 

 nearly each plant at one place and none at all at another. 

 This method of dispersion no doubt implies the loss and 

 destruction of a large number of young larvte, but makes 

 no extravagant call on one's faith in the travelling^ 

 capacities of the young larva?. 



Another feature of the larvae at Taormina was the 

 number of alternative food-plants they affected — always, 

 I think, where plenty of asphodel was near, but this may 

 merely have appeared so from my not looking for them 

 much elsewhere. The commonest of these was Phlomis 

 fruticosus, on which the larva? were so frequent and thriv- 

 ing, that I came to regard it as being but little less 

 acceptable to them than the asphodel, and the moths bred 

 therefrom are as fine as those from asphodel, notwith- 

 standing that it was a less satisfactory food with which to 

 supply the larva. There were frequently several on a 

 shrub of PJdoinis, but always solitarily, rolling up the 

 leaves and fastening together the opening shoots in very 

 ordinary tortrix manner, and eating down the central stem 

 much as many tortrices do on shrubs and trees. Several 

 larva? were found doing well on Teucriuiii fritticans, on a 

 very spinous Cytisvs (much like the Riviera Calycotoine), 

 on an annual spinous woolly G7ia2)hal'mni-\ike composite 

 that did not flower before we left Taormina, and on one 

 species of thistle, and on one only, of several handsome 

 species. This also I did not see in flower, but the leaves 

 were, in texture, so like those of our common Cnicus 

 arvensis, that I tried my homebred larva; with the leaves 

 of that pest of the farmer, and found that they seemed to 

 prefer it almost to lupin. Lupin, by the way, the only 

 alternative food-plant discovered at Hyeres, was not found 



