NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 277 



and day after day. As soon as tbey have eaten their way out of the shell 

 they stretch themselves, and then from time to time nibble portions 

 of the white chitinons-lookiug egg-shell, and a tough morsel it seems 

 to be for them ; but they never leave it for more than an inch or so, 

 when they rapidly come back. They keep nervously moving round 

 and about this, aiid if perchance auother larva should approach within 

 touch of it, a vigorous attack is made to drive off the intruder. All 

 going well during the first hour or two, the whole of the shell, or 

 sometimes not more than from half to two-thirds of it, is consumed ; 

 and once the larva really leaves the egg-shell, that is, walks away from 

 it, they do not touch it after. If by any chance a young larva gets 

 driven away from the egg-shell, death is the certain result, as I could 

 never induce them to feed on portions of empty shell left by others ; 

 nor would they eat the leaves or the brown stipules of the beech, which 

 it has been suggested they do eat. In no single case did they eat 

 other food in their first skin save and alone the one meal oft' their own 

 egg-shell. It is a common thing for many larvae to eat their own egg- 

 shells, but so far as my experience goes, this is the only species that I 

 have found for which one meal has proved to be all-sufficient for a 

 seven-days' existence, or until the change of the first skin. I do not 

 put this forward as anything new ; still, perhaps the fact has not been 

 quite so closely watched as I was enabled to do, and these details may 

 prove of interest to some. Full details of its later changes of skin, 

 and pupation of the larva of S.fagi, have been ably given in Buckler's 

 ' Larvffi,' &c. — W. H. Tugwell. 



Notes on Bombyx trifolii. — During a stay at Salcombe, South 

 Devon, this spring, I again had opportunities of observing the habits of 

 the larv£B of Bombyx trifolii, but owing to the severity of the winter 

 they were later than last year in appearing after hybernation ; this 

 year none appeared till April 26th, as against April 14th in 1894, and 

 the two specimens secured on that day were very small indeed. These 

 and several others found in April were at rest on dead bracken or 

 bare stumps of blackthorn, and it was not until May 1st that I saw 

 one actually feeding ; my approach disturbed it, and it began wander- 

 ing about ; during the course of its wanderings it was attacked by an 

 ant, from which it escaped by energetic writhing. At the end of a 

 twenty-minutes' journey it got into a region of dead gorse, so I 

 removed it to a place where there was some vegetation ; it took two 

 minutes to recover from the shock and then began cautiously to move ; 

 at last it fell-to on a blade of a short slender grass which grows 

 among the heather — unfortunately I do not know its name ; it 

 devoured two blades of this, and then resumed its wanderings and was 

 boxed. After this I had no further opportunities of observing these 

 larvai in their natural state ; but this observation, as well as those 

 recorded last year (Entom. xxvii. p. 198), seems to show that, at any 

 rate in Devonshire, the larva of B. trifolii is a more general feeder 

 than Mr. Bickerton Jones's note {ante, p. 56) would seem to imply. It 

 may be worth mentioning that this year I found one larva on the east 

 side of the harbour.— D. P. Turner ; Tonbridge, Sept. 13th, 1895. 



CcENONYMPHA TYPHON IN THE West OF SCOTLAND. — With reference to 

 Mr. Arkle's note {(mte, p. 257) regarding Ccenonympha tijplwn, in this 



ENTOM, — OCT. 1895, 2 A 



