268 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



men. Two or three non-entomological friends to whom I showed 

 the insect whilst alive declared it to be a hornet, and ridiculed 

 my assertion that it was a harmless moth ; but one individual, 

 more observant than the others, detected a difference in what he 

 termed the horns. 



Of the "hawk moths" I have seen but one species, Smerinthus 

 populi. A specimen was brought to me as a great curiosity by a 

 man who seemed to be well acquainted with the insect in its 

 larval state, but he could not understand at first how the winged 

 moth could in any way be associated with the creeping thing. 

 However, the little information I was able to impart so interested 

 him that he determined that in future he would feed and watch 

 all "bots" that he met with, to see what kind of "buzzards" 

 they would produce. 



Very few Bombyces have been observed. Nudaria mundana 

 occurred sparingly on the old walls, which are built up of stones 

 without mortar, and are a feature of the country on the east of 

 the town ; the larvse of this species were looked for in their 

 season, but could not be found. One or two larvae of S-pilosoma 

 fidiginosa were picked up on the Moss in the autumn of 1894, 

 and these produced imagines in May this year. Hepialus humidi 

 and H. velleda were both common. Series of the last-named 

 were taken on the edge of the Moss, and among grass on the 

 margin of one of the pools above Langley. The latter locality is 

 about a mile and a half, as the crow flies, from the Moss, and 

 something like 200 feet higher. The average size of the Moss 

 specimens is less than that of the Langley examples, and the 

 former are rather brighter. The unicolorous variety {gaUicus) 

 occurred in both places, but was more frequently taken by the 

 pool. It was noticed each evening that velleda ceased flying soon 

 after huimdi appeared on the wing. Only one specimen of H. 

 liipidinus was observed, and this occurred in the garden here. 

 Two female specimens of Saturnia pavonia (= carpini) were bred 

 last spring, and these were taken on three occasions to the Moss 

 where they had lived as larvse the previous autumn, but they 

 only attracted half a dozen suitors altogether. After the last 

 male taken had been in the cyanide-bottle a little while, it 

 occurred to me that I ought to have obtained a batch of fertile 

 eggs, so I quickly transferred H. I. M. from the bottle to a gauze- 

 covered box, but he seemed quite dead. However, about half an 

 hour or so afterwards I found him buzzing around right merrily. 

 When I reached home I placed the male and one of the females 

 in a roomy gauze-covered box. Next day a small cluster of eggs 

 was seen, and more the following day. The majority of these 

 shrivelled, but about a score of larvae hatched out from the 

 remainder, and these fed up well and are now (July 20th) about 

 to spin their cocoons. Young larvae of AsphcUia Jiavicornis have 

 been not uncommon, but examples of mature growth were rarely 



