130 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
leaves of this and several other trees ; but the suggestion which 
has been made that it feeds upon lichens, probably through the 
cryptic resemblance of the imago to these plants, I cannot find 
any support for. 
It has not proved an easy task to work out the life-history, 
because I have found it difficult to hibernate the moths, and 
when I have succeeded in doing so it has been difficult to obtain ~ 
ova from them in the spring. In the past five years I tried 
fruitlessly until last year. I did manage to get two females 
through the winter of 1917, from which there resulted a very 
few ova, but these proved infertile. 
In the autumn of 1919 about two dozen imagines of both 
sexes were put in a large glass and perforated zine cage, in 
which were placed leafy branches of oak. On the 28th of the 
following March, the season being very forward, I thought it 
advisable to inspect the contents of the cage and found there 
were twenty-one moths still living. I then introduced some 
freshly-cut branches of oak into the cage and stood it in a 
sheltered and shady position. On April 8th most of the moths 
were dead, but two of them were living and seemed fairly strong 
and healthy. On taking the branches out of the cage and examin- 
ing them I found they were sprinkled over with about four 
dozens of the ova; these were deposited on the twigs, mostly singly, 
and on roughened places on the bark; in some cases, however, 
two or three ova were placed adjoining each other and partly 
overlapping. They were very difficult to see: the parent moth is 
very apt to search out small depressions in the bark and to 
deposit an ovum in one of them; in such situations the upper part 
of the ovum was usually level with the top of the depression. 
In one case an oak twig contained a number of shallow oval- . 
shaped depressions ; some of these were taken advantage of by 
the moth, which deposited an ovum therein, almost entirely filling 
the depression, and the ovum was consequently nearly invisible. 
THE Ovum. 
The outline of the ovum is oval, with a length of about °83 
mm. and a breadth of about °33 mm. The height is about 
‘18mm. It has, like all the Tortrices with which I am acquainted, 
its polar axis horizontal ; the surface is divided by very fine raised 
margins into a number of irregularly shaped cells. It is highly 
glabrous and opalescent when first deposited ; the envelope is 
not transparent; as viewed by the naked eye the ovum appears 
to be pearly grey in colour. On April 11th the majority of the 
ova became leaden tinted, with an orange-coloured nucleus. 
The first ovum was noticed whilst the oak branches were in the 
cage on April 8rd. An ovum deposited on April 13th and kept 
under daily observation had changed to leaden colour five days 
after. It must be borne in mind that the season in April, 1920, . 
ao) a 
